That's Debateable

Oops! I did it again. I missed another week. But this time I have a really good excuse. I was trying to recover from the second presidential debate, which I didn't so much watch as I bothered a bunch of people who wanted to watch it and laugh at the same time. Let me explain what I mean. I was part of a show that took place during the debate, wherein I had the debate streaming to my smart phone and was supposed to recite what the candidates were saying as they said it, doing an impression at the same time, switching between the two candidates with other performers. If it seemed complicated, that's because it was. Even the premise is one big run-on sentence. 

Now, here comes my arrogance again. I've never had the audience leave while I was on stage, except for the one time my dad left during my 201 improv show. (In his defense, he'd seen the show before.) Usually, they stay the whole time. But not this time. It was a trainwreck, except people could look away, and they did, because I saw them leave. The audience was pretty big when the show started. Press was there (see below) and even a camera guy. When the camera guy left, though, I knew something was up. I'm not Mel Gibson, but even I knew that was a sign. I imagine the audience must have felt like the candidates during the debate, each thinking "If I get up and leave now, will anybody notice." Trump even tried it, but it just came off as creepy. But if you don't act on an idea in the moment, you miss it. That's Trump's motto: Carpe Diem by the Pussy.

Here's what would have fixed the show.  You have the debate streaming on the wall, with sound. Now we all can hear it and don't need to worry about bad internet connections or weak WiFi. Those who want to watch it can do so. Now, you have a panel of comedians watching on stage, and they basically riff on what's being said. Microphones are a must. It's rifftrax, MST3K, whatever this overplayed, outdone idea is, to perfectly represent this overplayed and outdone election. 

The mess of a show on stage left nothing but devastation and caused people to leave the room (like a Trump Presidency) and lied to the audience from the beginning (like a Clinton Presidency). It was abysmal. And don't just take my word as someone who had to stick out the whole, take the word of the press/reporter who also had to stick out the show. I apologized to her, but that didn't stop her from writing an article about me. Take a look below (scroll all the way to the bottom).

 http://nycitylens.com/2016/10/new-yorkers-take-on-the-second-presidential-debate/ 

Anyway, tonight is the final countdown. After this, it's up to us. Let's make and informed decision. That's the only way anything will be accomplished. You can watch this one in peace, don't worry. I'm not performing anything like that ever again. Ever.  

Youthful Arrogance

In honor of SNL this week, I finally did something that a lot of people my age have done multiple times: I lost my H-card and listened to Hamilton. So you can all stop screaming virgin at me, Ok? Please stop screaming virgin at me. And much like your first time, I couldn't figure out how to rap it or what to do with my hands. I lasted a while though, as it's a long play. The words moved so fast that I thought I was listening to Eminem: The Musical (which if no one is actively pursing yet, now is the time people!). And the whole time, I sat there thinking, "Wow! I could've written this."

Ah yes! There it is. My youthful arrogance. Although, maybe it's just straight up arrogance. You see, my arrogance is young, scrappy, and hungry. It can make me do insane things and think things that are even insaner (like that using "insaner" is a good idea even though I know it's not a word). You don't even know how conceited I can be. I do. And it's great. I love me.

Let me clarify something. I could not write Hamilton. It's masterfully crafted by a very talented writer/performer named Lin Manuel Miranda, although, if you ask me, he's more of a Lin Manuel Samantha (I'm not the first person to make this joke. SNL did it in the promos for this week. But I thought of it on my own, first, I swear.) That being said, there is a recurring beat and lyric in a song where at the end of every line it says something like "...Aaron Burr, sir?" And I've just been rhyming to that the whole week. I have a whole new story concocted about a woman's purse and needing to be reimbursed. And her purse is over ther, and stuff about a cat's purr and Aaron Burr, sir? At one point, I even speculate on any familial relation to Bill Burr. It's great. That's what I've been doing for fun recently. All just for me. And for one brief second, I'm just like, I could do this. I could write Hamilton. I'm not going to throw away my shot.

Anyway, the country is in the toilet and we're voting for whichever plunger we think can unclog the drain. That's what I've decided. Fair!? Fair. It's what's in everyone's minds, these debates and all. I don't know. I just don't know. I'm not very political, even though I just wrote a post about Alexander Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton!!). Let's get him in office. No more ten spot for you, now it's the country spot. That would be nice. But alas, [Spoiler Alert] he's dead. And Burr won. #I'mWithBurr

Catch Me in the Fall

Well, it's one of those weeks again. You know the one. Where I'm really busy and stuff, sleeping 5 hours a night. That sort of thing. Anyway, don't worry, I'll be fine. But I just wanted to do one of these monthly wrap-ups that I've been doing this entire year.  

Saturday Night Live has been making big moves all summer and now that it's coming back, the host game looks just as strong. We've got new cast members, new writers, and hosts that will make you wet yourself with joy. I'm probably going to wait in the standby line this season a good amount. Also, at the request of my mom, I'm going to write Lorne Michaels a letter, merely stating that I enjoy the show and that I'd like to write for it one day. I know this is a bit unorthodox, but I don't care. Let's do it! Look for that in the coming weeks. 

I'm still looking into the idea of a book for this blog. I want to make a book of my favorite posts or some fan favorites and write a few behind the scene notes to go with each one. Again, if anybody knows anybody, please let me know. Publishing is not my forte. Will Forte isn't even my forte, for some outside perspective. 

In other news, I was on TV. If you watch TruTV's Comedy Knockout, the episode entitled Broke Black Mountain, you can see my smiling face get roasted by three comedians.  It's TruTV presents the Roast of Charlie Shulman. Give it a look. It's the latest episode of Comedy Knockout on TruTV. And I got paid $50 for it. Not a bad night, huh?

Have a good week! Let's power through September and into October. We can do this!

1. Make a sweet Catch Me If You Can reference. (Completed)

2. Be a guest on someone else's podcast. (Completed)

3. Release more episodes of my own podcast. (Completed - 5th is being released whenever)

4. Write a TV show pilot. (2 in progress)

5. Write a play.

6. Take sketch writing classes. (Completed 2)

7. Join an independent improv team. (Completed)

8. Join an independent sketch team. (starting one very soon)

9. Write my own sketch show. (75% done)

10. Act in a sketch show. (the one I'm writing)

11. Host an open mic.

12. Do a feature set of stand up.

13. Attend a live taping of Saturday Night Live. (Completed - Hell Yeah!!)

14. Release a book. (this blog? someone help me do that!!!)

The Grapes of Trash

On Friday, I bumped into the fruit guy. And not so much "bumped into" as "deliberately went to buy stuff" on my way to improv practice. Now, you're wondering what a fruit guy is. This is the guy who used to sell me fruit every other day when I lived in Manhattan. He's still there, but I've moved to the crawl space of terrible building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. And you're probably saying "Charlie, you hang out at theaters. Aren't all of the guys 'fruit guys?'" Haha, that's very funny but also bigoted and uncalled for. Shame on you. Topple the Fruitriarchy. 

Anyway, I don't know his name and he doesn't know mine. We just conduct business under the code names "Fruit Guy" and "Boss or Brother or Big Man." He hugged me, he chatted with me, and he shoveled over 5 pounds of grapes and 2 peaches into a plastic bag for $5. Record scratch!!!! Wait, what? Yup! I had more grapes than a Napa Valley winery, all for $5 dollars. Now, I didn't want this many grapes, but I guess he had to go or something, and so he pawned them off on any sucker with a wallet and sweet tooth, or in other words, me.

Now I've got a bag full of grapes, which incidentally is the name of my Smashing Pumpkins cover band. So I'm asking everybody that I see "Hey! Do you like grapes? Cause I have a couple." Really burying the lead, you know, because you show up with a bag of grapes and people get ansy, like "What else does this guy have in a bag? Bodies?" Nope, just 2 peaches and a ton of grapes. 

Cut to me eating a few. They're good, I think to myself, not even making a dent in the bag. You may have guessed this, but no one wants these f@&$king grapes. So, they come with me, and I carry them the whole night,until finally putting them into the refridgerator, where most of them meet their untimely demise. 

But one lucky ziploc bag full of grapes (trademark pending) made it with me over the weekend. Upon opening it, I smelled a smell that kind of told me that these particular grapes were like a husband and wife that just let the babysitter in: on their way out. I didn't eat them. I screamed "I'm privileged!" and threw them away in a NYC trash can. Naturally, they exploded.

Seriously, though, I watched something beautiful happen. A homeless man (that's not the beautiful part) walked up to the trash can and started to rummage through it. He found the grapes, as they were not concealed well, and began tearing into them with the ferocity of someone who enjoyed edible trash (still not the beautiful part). I was a little annoyed at how messy he was being with my trash, but I guess it's that old saying of how beggars can't be choosers of how messy beggars who can't be choosers are with their food. But he was enjoying the food (that's the beautiful part) and for that I was glad.

Grapes were everywhere. It really did look like the trash can exploded. Only the ziploc bag remained, full of grape juice and regret. Regrape juice. But it made someone's day. So, all in all, I couldn't really be sad. I could only be happy that I fed a homeless man for $3, $5 minus the $1 each for the two peaches. Why am I explaining this to you? I don't know either. All I want to say is everybody loves grapes and they are underrated. Eat more grapes. And when they get too big from the popularity of this viral post, that's right when we can Topple the Graptriarchy!

Joke of the Week

I've been receiving good feedback about the past few posts on here from you, the readers, you know who you are (Hi Mom!). So thanks for that. This week, I'd just like to take a few minutes to tell you about a really cool story that I heard. It goes like this: 

There were these two cephalapods hanging out in the ocean, right by the Great Barrier Reef. Cephalapods are naturally social creatures, so the one cephalapod says to the other "Can you help me set up my party Friday night? The whole school [of fish] is coming. I'm evening thinking about shoaling up with Jessica and her friends."

The other cephalapod replies "Oh wow! Big plans, huh? Sure, I'll help. Should go pretty quick. You know what they say, sixteen tentacles are better than one!" 

"Thanks, dude. You corral (rock)!" Says the first cephalapod. The second one then pauses and says "But wait. But wait! I'll only help you if you help me too. I need a math tutor. You would think having eight tentacles would make math easier, but I'm struggling." 

The first cephalapod replies "I can help with that, bro. Come over tomorrow." The second one then asks shyly " You would do that? You don't mind?"  The first cephalapod thinks for a moment and then says "Not at all. I like how we help each other out. I love doing things squid pro quo!"

                            🐙FIN🐙 

Fantasy Football

Well, it's that time of year again. As we wave goodbye to summer with one hand, we catch a football, throw a football, and drink a beer with the other hand (that's our more dominant hand, anyway). Why do we do this? Because, much like school, football is back in session! It's time to gather up your jerseys and start wearing them to work and on the weekends. And also, it's time to join a fantasy football league.

Fantasy football is like an onion to me. It has too many layers and it makes me cry. Also, there are too many players and that makes me cry too because I don't know what I'm doing. But when the guys at work ask me to join their league, what am I supposed to say? This could be my only chance to make work fun. I can't pass that up. (I briefly considered doing a page of football term/team name puns but that would be a GIANTS mistake.) So I'm going to pick in the draft tomorrow, or at least auto draft and live with the consequences while pretending that I made each choice. "I know I chose Kaepernick. He's doing great things, I think?"

I guess we will just wait to see how this goes. I'm not much of a sports watcher, although I successfully fooled a focus group into thinking that I was, so I'm actually a good liar. Ever since I got to college and found out that on Sundays people go out and do things besides watching sports, I just haven't been able to go fully back to watching sports. It doesn't do as much for me as it does for anybody else who you ask. I see people paint their faces and crush beer cans on their heads and I wonder if that hurts or not?

And I don't know the first thing about football players. I don't know their stats, their hopes, their fears, their dreams. I just know the teams (and honestly there's room for improvement there too). So who knows how this will go. But it's a new experience and I'll probably lose money. I've never lost money this way before, though, so there's your silver lining's playbook. Ooh! Playbook! That's one of them sports things, right?

Walk it Off!

I'm a walker. No, this is nothing related to The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. I just think cars are expensive, unlike the people in The Walking Dead, who find them lying around, and unlike the people in Game of Thrones, who don't know what cars are. Plus, I live in a huge city with plenty of public transportation. So long story short, I walk everywhere.

Walking in New York City is one of the most dangerous things that you can do, right behind moving to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. It's a whole set of acrobatic moves that are, well, when you think about it, pretty instinctual. It combines all of those walking rules that you learned in elementary school (single file, eyes in front, hands to yourself) with some new ones (don't give money to beggars, just keep walking, ew! Don't touch that! It's a used condom). Especially at night and in Times Square.

I forget what level of Dante's Hell Times Square is based on (seems like maybe level 7, violence), but it's one of those places in New York where you have to go if you've never been, but if you live here you never ever go. It's a really scary experience, even scarier than moving to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. There are so many people, all walking at different speeds, taking different paths, and looking at their phones. It's obnoxious. And it becomes very frustrating when I want to get around these people and I have to dodge a swinging arm or two.

Why do we, as humans, swing our arms when we walk? Hold on while I use The Google... Ok. It's called Arm Swing, and the definition is all physics. "Swinging arms in an opposing direction with respect to the lower-limb reduces the angular momentum of the body, balancing the rotational motion produced during walking." All it's saying is it helps us balance. I knew there had to be a reason.  Because for me right now, walking in New York City is one giant game of trying not to get sucker punched in the dick.

I'm five 5'9", 5'8" sopping wet. My height is such that it positions my balls at direct hand upswing level. Like hitting a golf ball off of a tee. Whack! So, I'm constantly using my high school dodgeball skills too and quickly dodging nut slaps. If this were high school, they would be out for hitting me in the balls, unless the gym teacher didn't see it, in which case I would be out and in pain. That happened a lot. Damn you high school!!!! But really, though, it's tough. Whenever I try to pass someone, I make a jock protector out of some cardboard that I find on the street and charge full force into their swinging hand, in one last ditch attempt to hurt them too. This. Is. For. Sparta! And Athens! The one on the left is named Athens!!! It usually works out pretty well.

All in all, my intact balls and I have been getting to where we need to go, which is unfortunately Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. And I don't do the arm swing thing. If I fall over while walking, that just means that I need to get better at walking. Simple as that. So be careful out there. Protect yourself. And if you end up getting hit, just walk it off.

"No"Stalgia

I just finished the 8th Harry Potter "book." I put "book" in quotes because it's a play. It's a long play. He's the boy-who-lived-through-4-acts. Before that, I caught a Pikachu. 

"I just finished Harry Potter" and "I just caught a Pikachu" are two phrases that I thought I would never say again, much to the chagrin of my parents who spent so much money on both. But this time, I paid my own way into the past as these relics from my childhood resurfaced with the vengeance of a thousand Voldemorts and like ten zubats. Now, I was able to do both of these thing s because we exist in the future but live for yesteryear, when Donald Trump was the "You're fired!" guy and not the "You're hired!" guy. Also, if it worked once, why not do it until is breaks, huh? 

Why does the old stuff work so well? What can it teach us? I think that the new, original content coming now is as good as it's ever been. However, and I hate to be the contrarian here, do we need to "revive" Pokemon or resummon He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Can't the new craze be Poke Bowls instead of PokeBalls and legal pot instead of Harry Potter? I don't know. And haven't we seen Hilary and Donald before too? When does it end? When does yesterday stay yesterday? Let's be new and inventive right here, right now. That's really all we have, isn't it? I thinks so.

Anyway, that's enough rhetorical questions for today, don't you think? Ha... Ha... Ha... (Walks into the ocean, never looking back...)

Poor Soles

I know it's not possible, and correct me if I wrong, but are my feet shrinking? Be straight with me. I must know. Are they? Because every time I go to the shoe store, it seems as though the last size was too big. I know different shoes run "big" or "small," but what gives? Do I have some weird foot disease where my feet shrink proportionally to the growth of my body? In other words, do I grow and they shrink at the same rate? Like air flowing from one side of a balloon to the other? All I'm aware of is a small amount of athlete's foot and bunyan so big that it would give Paul a run for his money. That's it! Please, I need to know. I can't keep guessing.

And you're probably thinking "Oh small feet means small..." And yes, you're right. All of my socks are way too big. I can fit two feet in them for crying out loud. It's insane. You can't just buy one sock at the store either. They are sold in pairs, as if to say "Hey Charlie, we know you just need one, but here's two, cause you're weird." I don't like it. I even asked the shoe store attendant if I was walking wrong. She said "No" and the changes her mind to "Yes" when she saw me start hopping.

The point is are all my clothes that I wear too big on me, right/left down to my shoes? The answer seems like "yes" but I can't hear any of you because technically you're not real. All I can do is dunk my feet in hot water and hope they expand. Wish me luck! Actually, I don't need your luck because I always carry my lucky rabbit's foot with me, both as a good luck charm and a model of what size I aspire for my feet to grow to. So that's where my luck will come from. And it's a good thing too, because I have a feeling that this will be no easy feat...

La Cucaracha

As some of you know, I recently moved. I left the comfort of my swanky midtown New York apartment and moved over to the border between Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick, deep in the heart of Brooklyn. People say that the area there is getting better every day. I don't know. Like many of the other Borders that I know, this one looks run down and out of business too. But, as of now, I'm open to seeing what it turns into. All it needs is a touch of hipster and maybe a full series run of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: Brooklyn Edition, you know, if ABC is looking for a good Sunday lead in to 9:00. But enough about that. I'm not a tv executive... Yet!

Let's move onto the main reason I'm here. Some 320 million years ago, around when the dinosaurs were jerking each other off, there existed the first ever cockroaches. These guys have evolved like Pokemon over the last 320 million years and now reside as the pests we see today. This new apartment that I live in has so many cockroaches. I mean, I thought dinner was going to be made and on the table tonight when I got home. They are usually playing cards in my room. I join when I can. Anyway, these guys need to go. I don't like cockroaches. Only bugs I can't stand. Well, I don't like bees very much either. Silverfish, however, fascinate me. How do they have that many legs? Ants are so smart. Cockroaches serve no purpose and can just go die. 

Now, I thought they were confined to my apartment. So imagine my surprise when I moved my keyboard at work and I found one the cockroaches scurrying around. There is no way to prove that it was a Brooklyn cockroach and not a Queens cockroach, except for the fact that it was wearing oversized white sunglasses and a fedora. I couldn't let it get away. Which is why when I saw it trying to make a call on my work telephone, I knew I had to act. Whack! Looks like you forgot to dial nine first. Your buddies can't help you here. The entire rest of the day I thought thousands of them were going to come streaming out of my backpack and attack me. And then they would eat me, and I would turn into a human made of a swarm of cockroaches.* Ew! 

Luckily, that didn't happen. They bigs ones are still at home, biding their time until I come at them with the can of Raid again. That's an effective way to get rid of the ones I can see. But it's all about those ones that you can't see. That's your metaphor for this week. Sometimes, in life, our need to treat the problem at the source, not the surface. (free therapy)

I think I'd make an OK exterminator, don't you? I already were clothes that are way too big on me, and I don't enjoy office work. Plus, I like meeting people and killing roaches. Yeah, I'd make a great exterminator. I'll create that business soon. So, if you need an exterminator, hit me up! **

Ooh, look, there's one now. Gotta go! 

* I recently read Prey by Michael Crichton and I'm fascinated by swarms of insects and nanoparticles right now. The technology is out there and very dangerous.

** Do not contact me.