Greetings from the West Edmonton Mall!

Well I'm here.  I've been here for the past four days and I can say with all my heart that this mall is one of the most confusing things I've ever seen.  I can't quite figure out it's purporse or value to these people.  This is a building that covers over SIX MILLION SQUARE FEET!!!  A mall!  Six million square feet?!?!    This polyp on the local economy comes complete with a waterpark (with the world's largest indoor wave pool), an amusement park (with the world's largest indoor roller coaster), a car wash, an aquarium, a bungee jump pad, a firing range, an ice rink, a casino, eight hundred retail stores, and of course, a comedy club that yours truly is headlining for five nights.  And for those of you that know me, this could not be more of an awkward pairing.  I'm agoraphobic.  I'm not a fan of cologne.  I despise slow walkers.  And most of all, I'm not a big fan of things that seem belch natural resources.

I find myself wandering through it's halls before each show muttering in disbelief at the excess of it all.  How does a building like this operate efficiently during weather that rivals Winnipeg and Anchorage for shittiest in North America?  It's open year round.  The water and air heated to a tropical level during the eight months that Old Man Winter slams it's icy cock into the mouths of every Edmontonian.  Average, AVERAGE, winter temps reach 10degrees F.  With windchill, this city regularly spends days in the -10 to -20 range.  How can they afford to keep this running?

Oh yeah, they have a lot of money.  Oil money.  The best kind of money there is in a first world country.  A fact they continue to make abundantly clear, often referring to this place as North Texas.  What the fail to remember is that everyone fucking hates Texas.  Well, except people from Texas.  But, honestly, who the fuck cares what they think? 

"Don't you like it even a little bit, Ben?"  No.  I fucking don't.  "Why?  It's just a mall." No, The Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, New Hampshire is just a mall.  The Cherry Creek Mall in Colorado is just a mall.  This is a building that covers 48 city blocks.  This is a large town.  A large town encased in cement and glass, heated and cooled depending on time of year.  A large town with zero infrastructure.  A large town just designed for people who can afford to hang out there.  A large town that's only function is to funnel more money out of hard working private business owners pockets and into PetSmart's, Sears', Victoria's Secrets', Abercrombie's, and Earl's quarterly earning schedule. 

I wonder how much money is being sent towards the mall and away from Jasper or Whyte Ave., two areas that contain more privately held shops, bars, and eateries. 

"But Ben, those are outdoors.  During the winter the weather is too shitty to be outside."  Fine, don't live in Edmonton.  Look at the fucking map.  Of course it's fucking cold, it's the far North.  You see how on the map there's more dots with little names beside them the further south you go.  That's because normal people choose not to live on the tundra.  You want a giant wave pool, head 1500 miles to the west or 2000 miles to the east, there's a giant one waiting for you.  You wanna make a ton of money, turn this into an outpost and work for six months out of the year before returning south for the other six to sit in the warmth.

Musings on not drinking after one year...

It sucks.

How do we spell relief? D-E-A-D!

Good morning, everyone!  And to everyone who cares, Bin Laden is DEAD!!!!!  Let us rejoice that the man we were told was responsible for 9/11 has been killed!!!  To all the families who lost a loved one during the events of that tragic day, you can now sleep tight knowing that, while it took us nearly a full decade, America brought justice to the culpable individual.  Your mouths frothed and seethed with the need and taste for iron and blood, and our leaders have delivered as promised. 

For sustinance?  No.  Hope?  No.  Safety?  No.  Does it bring reason?  No.  For it will not fill you hearts or bellies.  This is just to satisfy the vengeful god-complex that lives within us all.  Congratulations, folks!  Nothing has been accomplished.

Gun owners should not rejoice and "pious" people should not celebrate.  This is just another example of a symptom being attacked.  Bin Laden didn't kill all those people.  At best, he drafted the blueprints.  Extremism killed all those people.  And rather then root out the cause; the virus of thought that infects and compels beautiful, family-loving people to do such things, we play a game of global whack-a-mole.  Why?  Because when you grab at the end of the string of reason, the scariest thought may come in finding that the rope is tethered to ourselves. 

Today, we've become a more difficult culture.  Because today, what we said is that we are less concerned with solving a problem, and more concerned with appearing righteous.  This is all for your entertainment, and trust me, I hope you're all entertained because this is not the end.

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

First off, I want to apologize for doing exactly what I said I would.  I'm not quite sure who it is I'm apologizing to, seeing as how I think very few actually pay attention, but I'll say it for myself.  I have not kept up on this to the best of my ability and I promise to be better about it.  Why didn't I?  No reason really.  Most likely laziness and being easily distracted by pornography or Facebook.  Two websites that, if you put me under a CT scan, would activate the same parts of my brain.  What can I say, conscienceless photo posting makes my cookie dough rise. 

SIDE NOTE:  What do Helen Thomas and my dick have in common?  Both are veiny and known to lean to the left.

Anyway, over the past week I've found myself in a near perpetual state of pensiveness - catching myself dazing out windows, trailing off in thought, or just pondering the question of what "home" means to me.  This is a question that I've struggled with since I left Maine, the state in which I grew up, to live out of a duffle bag for two or so years, and then up until recently, bouncing from apartment to apartment with my girlfriend and now wife, Crystal.  For over ten years I've prided myself on owning as little as possible, accruing only things that I feel are needed (however warped my definition of that may be), and almost monthly throwing out garbage bags of items I've lost attachment to.  I to this day have no photo albums, clothes, memorabilia, or items from my past.  Some could have called it rootless but it was the easiest way for me to deal with all the tangled feelings I carried for my youth. 

Why are my feelings about my upbringing so difficult?  Was I abused?  Did I have a hard childhood?  No.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Well, at least at home and in comparison with others around me.  I grew up in a middle class loving family.  Both my parents are good, hard-working, honest people.  And with the exception of normal teenage angst, I would say that we had, and have, a close relationship.  With all that being said, I ran almost as far away as possible almost as soon has legally possible.  Why?  I've always felt separate.  I've never felt a real sense of being "home".  For a long time, I wasn't sure what that meant.  And this is largely because of the environs in which I grew up.

I grew up in New England, and mostly in Maine near the capital area.  For 11 years I lived in Winthrop, a small town of approximately 5,000 people.  I would say it was a very Cider House Rules-y type of place to grow up.  And I say Cider House Rules strictly with regard to topography, and not because my black orchard manager knocked up his daughter (Which he did. But I, unlike Tobey Maguire, refuse to let it be a defining moment of my youth).  I guess what I'm getting at is that it was picturesque.  On the outside, a town that was seemingly puritanical and pure.  But underneath it's exterior was a place fraught with more problems than most.  It was here that I learned how to drink and yell.  It was here that I watched people use more drugs than I thought humanly possible.  I've known more people than I care to mention that decided to take their own lives.  This was a destructive place that people got locked in.  People were designated paths and seemed to rarely deviate.  "Home" only made me more and more confused about my identity.  Towns that small, I felt, were stifling because your role was set.  There were no other groups to migrate to.  I was who I was in the pecking order.  That would never change.  So I left.  And for the most part, I didn't look back.

I ran to Colorado.  Started a new life.  Reinvented myself from the inside out.  Kept some old friends but mostly accrued new ones.  People I would die for.  I did this on my own for years.   Then during a trip east to visit family, I met my partner, bane and breath of my existence, my wife.   I took her back out west with me at first opportunity.  In Colorado people saw me as who I am today.  And because my wife had not known me prior to our initial meeting, so did she.  I felt that back home, people saw me as who I was.  Prone to forsaking all the work I had done. 

Even with all these confused feelings and motives, I still found a way to be proud of where I was from.  I told people I was proud of being "Made in Maine", even though I felt it fed all the negative parts of me.  I now realize the parts I was proud of were wrong.  I revered the loud mouth side.  The cantankerous, booze shoe that would tell people off at the drop of a hat.  That was the side I designated to my small little lakeside town. 

After almost seven years, and moderate success at comedy, the opportunity presented itself to me to return to the Northeast and perform.  I pushed for it.  I'm not sure why seeing as how I had always felt people wouldn't understand or accept what I was doing.   And when the time approached, I was more nervous than I had ever been.  Would people approve who I was now?  My ideas.  Thoughts.  The way I operated.  I didn't believe they would.  I believed that others would only come to see what they had seen before. 

I'm proud to say I was wrong.  After catching up with faces from the past, I realize I was wrong on almost every front.  Wrong about what facets of my personality were fed by the place I grew up.  Wrong about what people though about me.  Wrong about what people wanted to see.

I learned that the place I grew up is like all things you love; complicated.  While it has so many problems and shortcomings, I grew up around some of the most beautiful, tough, strong-spirited, community-minded people I could ever ask for.  While some people have made decisions in their lives that I don't approve of, I have done the same myself.  I realize now that people just wanted to see me do well.  Wholeheartedly and purely.  Because they too are proud of where they're from and they view me as part of that. 

I'm still humbled almost two weeks after. 

It's funny, but I thought when I left after doing those shows I would feel weakened by the experience.  That I would leave needing to return to Colorado to pick myself up.  But the opposite happened.  I now feel like I'm ready to move forward.  Why?  Because I've got a few hundred of the drunkest, scariest, kindest, assiduous family members at my back. 

I'm sorry if this seems rambling and poorly put together.  And if this is a bit mushy, I'm sorry about that as well.  Trust me, there will be more unbridled, thoughtless disregard for decency and trends coming soon.  I just wanted to put this down before I forgot, as we all tend to do in our lives.

Thanks to all my Maine friends and family again.  Thank you for giving me the comfort I needed.

...of hands false or true to be shaken...

To everyone reading this, please keep in mind that because I had virtually nothing to do, coupled with my hosts constant work schedule, I inhaled western movies, pornography, and stand-up comedy in quantities that should only be allowed if being offset by several uninterrupted hours in a batting cage or two-plus milligrams of Klonopin.

Having now returned to my mile high hacienda after thirteen torpor filled days in Los Angeles I can honestly say I'm more ambivalent about that city than ever. 

First off, why was I out there?  I went out at the advice of my agent for "pilot season".  "What is pilot season?", you ask.  Well if you were to inquire with someone from L.A., I'm sure they would tell you it's the time of year in which all the major networks begin casting and producing new programing and development ideas for delivery to the American public.  A great time to get out and read for roles while simultaneously networking with casting execs.  If you were to ask me, I would tell you that it's a chance to fly out to California on your own dime, hold up in a studio apartment with your gracious friend, and spend two weeks on a leather couch cataloging your scents.

Part of me enjoys some of what southern California has to offer.  The weather is great.  A lot of amazing, interesting food.  Cool design.  And as much as some want to deny it, you can't help but be sold a little by the "anything can happen" mentality that made that place what it is today.  But there are also a lot of good intentions gone awry, yogurt shops, and kill-or-be-killed attitudes with respect to my chosen craft. 

A good number of the comics I've become acquainted with have chose to be there because of a need to be closer to studios or agents for work.  And some have decided to be there to chase the dream.  And honestly, I can't blame them.  It's life, and it's short, try for it if that's what shakes you up.  But after just half a month I don't think I could have tolerated another placating smile, disingenuous handshake, or indifferent introduction.

Hey, new comic guy, I'm not a threat to your chances.  I'm just going to get up and yell for a bit and then it's your turn.  I don't give a shit if you have a killer bit on jaywalking and you're the emcee of that mediocre open-mic behind the pizza shop every second Tuesday of the even numbered months.  Extend some courtesy and treat me like a person.  It's clear that you're upset that I'm there because five minutes every eight weeks is all you have.  Or because I don't fit the mold of what happens to be cool right now.  I know you have to integrate yourself into a scene, because otherwise, you're just another mid-twenties look-alike floating in a sea of wanton acceptance.  You're miserable, that's clear in your swagger.

So I've got an idea for you.  A chance to solve the overcrowding issue, as well as those disappointed, tired eyes you suffer through your days with.

GO THE FUCK HOME!!!!!  This place will eat your young, stupid, fattened soul like it's spiritual foie gras.  Put on your Converse and best planned flannel and run for the fucking hills.  In fact, no, run for the plains, the people you're trying to hide from live in the hills.  Grab a large blanket, go to the prairie, start a fire, and smoke signal your disappointed mother and father to come and get you.  Once you've got back to Jackson, Michigan or Roanoke, Virginia, conquer the scene there.  Find your sincerity again.  Create and adjust.  Make people laugh because it feels good.  That will be a lot easier than swallowing a quart of your own snot and blood after I pound your spiral joke book into your "indie" face.

Tootles!

Aww, c'mon Mane!

A couple weeks ago the media world was abuzz as photos surfaced of "musician", Gucci Mane, sporting a brand new face tattoo.  Articles and blogs went back and forth on the current mental state of the "musician" given his recent arrests, incarceration, and short stint in a psychiatric hospital.  And while everyone weighed in on everything from the worst face tattoos in the industry to the future of his career given his recent exploits, all the writers ignored the most egregious behaviour carried out during this affair.  It was ignored by said writers because it was perpetrated by themselves.  Please! PLEASE! PLEASE! Stop referring to this guy as a fucking musician, you knucklefuckers.

Have any of you heard Lemonade?  Here, take your dick out and slap your ears in the face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Q4s_ZdvAQ 

See, it's not music.  At BEST, it's strip club confetti.  At worst, it is exactly what it is, the semi-retarded musings of what appears to be an obsessive shopper.  What 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' would have been like had it been directed by Johnny Dang. 

Apparently all it takes nowadays to earn the label of musician is a pen to sign your contract, a PR person to advise you on what designer to wear, and an asshole on your face to squirt audio-shit onto disk.  So he got an ice cream cone tattooed on his face.  Big deal.  It's obvious he did it to stand out in a flooded industry where everything sounds the same.  Well, that and because he's bat-shit crazy.  If the press likes the insane so much, why not find moderately talented ones?  Why not do a story on Big Seth, the guitar playing busker that frequented the liquor store I worked at for years?  The guy had an amazing voice and wrote heady, street songs about living on the run.  He was like Tracy Chapman, but white and handsy.  Oh, and he had a tattoo on his calf that said, "Fuck Sausage Teeth".  Brilliant!  At least he created something somewhat interesting. 

In the end, tattoo everything on your body.  Who fucking cares?  We're pretty much the animal equivalent of a useless, office document.  Why not have the shitty clip art to go with it?  But please, reserve assigning the brand of musician to someone who puts some effort into their sound.

WHOOPIE for the assholes!!!!

So, last week a bored and surprisingly non-concussed, Rep. Paul Davis of the Maine State Legislature, took time out of his busy, publicly elected and compensated, day to propose that my ovoid brethren of Maine pass a bill making the "Whoopie Pie" the state dessert.  Can you believe time and effort went into this?  I'm appalled there will be a debate on this issue.  Hey Paul, you're a douche-bag!  

What's a whoopie pie, Ben?  A whoopie pie is a baked good consisting of a creamy, white frosting smashed between two round pieces of chocolate cake.  Perfect for ensuring that the 59% of Maine's population considered to be overweight or obese (a number that has risen 100% in 17 years), or the 36% of the State's kindergartners with a BMI in the 85th percentile, or the 25% of overweight high schoolers, continue to have the perfect confectionery wheels to put on the heifer bus to diabetes town.  I mean, why even try to hide your intentions of not setting a  precedent for change?  Why not make the state dessert methamphetamine and unprotected sex?  Why couldn't we suggest the blueberry be the state dessert?  Or perhaps a brisk walk?

I'm not attacking food items as the source of our dietary problems in this country.  I fully believe it is up to parents and the individual to make positive choices.  Whenever my son asks for a sugary treat, I burn him with a cigarette.  This effectively kills two potentially dangerous habits with one stone; eating sweets and trusting me.  Regardless, I do feel that the state government should be the model for what is best for its constituents.  If you're a state launching a school program to reduce the availability of sugars and fats in an effort to try and curb the single greatest health threat to our culture, you ought not make your state animal, bacon.  

Perhaps the most troubling part of this, and I'm not trying to point out the obvious, but time was taken out of a day to propose this.  If you're a politician and it hasn't been spelled out to you yet, let me be the first; everyone hates you!!!  EVERYONE!  Republican, Democrat, Muslim, Hari Krishna; we'd all gladly use you to sandbag New Orleans against further storms if we thought the water wouldn't seep through the holes in your pockets.  You're now below mimes on the social-ladder.  Most children are taught to get in a van with a strange, candy-wielding, man before ever taking a job as a congressional page.  At least if you survive the van ride, it will drop you off near your home after the diddling. 

The majority of you spineless, pandering, ass-shafts spend your entire campaigns talking about how different you are, and how you'll "be the change Washington needs", only to turn around and spend hours of a taxpayer funded day proposing a bill to make the cod piece the state garment.  

So Paul, if you're reading this, which given how much free time you appear to have, you probably are, I believe the order of your regular agenda while in office should be: 1. Fix everything because it's all fucked.  2.  Draft up asinine, insensate, moron gaiety to bring attention to my feeble, sun starved part of the earth.  The day that happens, I'll bring the cake.