Well, on Friday morning I am. But tomorrow morning I’m speaking to a class at SUNY Albany (I know, what the fuck?) and I’ll likely be doing work and such throughout the afternoon. And tonight is the October Laughs on [...]]]> (Cross-posted from theKevinMarshall.Tumblr.com, where because of logistics/time constraints most content now appears. Follow/subscribe!)

Well, on Friday morning I am. But tomorrow morning I’m speaking to a class at SUNY Albany (I know, what the fuck?) and I’ll likely be doing work and such throughout the afternoon. And tonight is the October Laughs on Lark (Elda’s on Lark in Albany, NY; 8pm, $5, 21+) which I hope those of you in the area will make the effort to see since we’ve got a LOT of fun stuff planned.

So I’ll likely be on radio silence here for the most part. BUT DO NOT FRET! I have really, really cool stuff queued up on the All Access and Spike tumblr pages, both of which you should follow, particularly if you’re a fan of comics/tech/gaming/what have you.

In the meantime I’ll be here, trying not to scream.

-K

Last night’s dream:

I met a woman, dark hair tied into her back. She asked me if I wanted to go to Austria with her. I said yes, desperately.

First we had to run down the coast toward New Orleans, then we’d be flown there. The catch was that we literally had [...]]]>

I imagined myself as an old man, desperate and unable to duplicate [...]]]> I was about to get ready for bed and something I was watching reminded me that I’m 30 and that my time is finite. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I felt anxiety over the passing of time and inevitable death.

I imagined myself as an old man, desperate and unable to duplicate the current standards – physically, mentally, and emotionally – that I currently maintain.  I envisioned myself gray, wrinkled, desperate, and alone. I saw myself with the crowning bald spot I’ve somehow managed to avoid thus far. I felt the restrictions of mortality. My head felt light, and something inside of me made me want to cry out. I restrained myself.

Then I stopped myself and made the effort to think about anything else. Suddenly, my entire life up until that point had seemed so much better, despite the struggles with weight, depression, alcoholism (and recovery), anxiety, uncertainty, and loneliness. I felt like I’d been ruined by this…not revelation, but realization. During the course of what could not have been more than a minute, I wished for that time that seemed like an eternity ago when I hadn’t thought of myself as…temporary. I thought of the comfort one must feel in believing in an afterlife and realized it’s this fear that must carry a person when they talk about reliance on faith as they face an acknowledged end point. That’s not me, though. I’m an Atheist now and I always will be.

Strangely, it was that which ultimately took me out of that episode and brought me snapping back into reality or comfort or whatever you want to call it. It was the realization that I’m here now, I won’t be here at one point, and my inevitable death means I won’t have to be worried about things. I won’t have the capability for regret or to wish I’d be able to remain, because I’ll simply be gone. I won’t regret or feel remorse because it won’t be possible.

I continue to find it soothing as I write this. Not in any self-destructive or suicidal way. If anything, just the opposite.

At the end (hopefully a long way off) I’ll know, as long as I make the effort to remember, that this one time late at night as I was about to go to sleep, I realized I’d one day be at the brink of death and not fear it, because I’d had the astronomical luck of existing in the first place. So long as my memory doesn’t perish, or if someone is there to remind me, I’ll remember that being in the moment was a gift – given by nothing and no one save circumstance, but a gift none the less – and that I’ll never, ever, have the capability to regret its passing.

There.

Which at first I found weird because just seeing the stills alone, I was shocked and couldn’t see how anyone could see it as anything but racist.

But then I [...]]]> I’ve seriously gotten more flack on Tumblr over calling out Cloud Atlas’s yellowface than I have any other view I’ve expressed in recent memory.

Which at first I found weird because just seeing the stills alone, I was shocked and couldn’t see how anyone could see it as anything but racist.

But then I thought, wait a minute, why do The Wachowskis have such fervent defenders of their art to the extent that they’d actually defend something so obviously racist and wrong-headed as what was done in Cloud Atlas? I mean, it’s The Wachowskis. They haven’t done a good movie since the first Matrix fifteen years ago.

I don’t just mean that casually. Every movie they’ve done since has been just awful. And yet the way these kids are writing into my inbox you’d think they were defending Rushdie from the fatwa. But like, guys, they’re so in the wrong here and “Speed Racer” was no Midnight’s Children, you know? And I’m willing to bet “Cloud Atlas” is going to be objectively shitty too no matter how magnificent it looks (par for the course with the Wachowskis).

Speaking of Rushdie, his memoir Joseph Anton, covering the events leading up to the controversy over The Satanic Verses and his years spent in hiding, is out now. He decided to write it in the third-person which I find intriguing if not strangely off-putting. I’m curious if it makes a statement about how detached he felt from events at the time or if it was just an attempt to give the false perspective of an objective bystander.

Reviews are slowly trickling in. Some are saying it’s typical Rushdie: beautiful, elegant, poetic, inslight. Others are saying it’s typical Rushdie: self-indulgent, lacking in self-awareness, meandering, and 650 bloviating pages.

I’m going to pick it up. It’ll take me forever to get around to reading it, but at least I’ll know it’s on my bookshelf.

Well, okay, there’s times where I feel like people in general don’t like me. A lot of that is probably residual self-loathing and leftover chubby kid insecurity, because I am told otherwise without provocation at certain performances. Not all – not the ones where I [...]]]> There’s just times where I feel like comedy doesn’t like me.

Well, okay, there’s times where I feel like people in general don’t like me. A lot of that is probably residual self-loathing and leftover chubby kid insecurity, because I am told otherwise without provocation at certain performances. Not all – not the ones where I don’t feel great about what I’ve done so I’ll duck out. But most. I don’t go fishing for compliments, so that when I do get them, I feel it’s genuine.

Which is probably a weird thing for a comedian to say. After all, isn’t trying to make people laugh just a way to get the approval of strangers? Isn’t that a strange, vampiric and dependent relationship one develops with the audience? I suppose it can be. But honestly, I don’t care about people laughing, I care about being funny, if that makes any sense. Like, I’ve felt better about shows where the laughter was more reserved than ones where it was loud and boisterous.

I don’t know, because I’m fucking weird, okay?

Anyway, I’m performing tonight at The Mine (388 Broadway, Saratoga Springs NY) as part of a gaggle of local comics starting at 8pm. Good friend and good comedian Ethan Ullman (host of Alternative to Sleeping) is hosting. So come check it out. There’ll be a lot of new material, I think some of it incendiary depending on the make-up of the crowd.

Also, did I mention I’ve taken over the Tumblr account for Spike TV? I think I mentioned it over on the MMA blog, not sure if I did here or not. Either way, follow it and my work for the Tumblr for All Access Weekly.

But I don’t. Sorry about that.

I’ve been fairly dull lately. [...]]]> You wish I had something interesting, funny, or provocative to say right now. Or, at the very least, you wish I had something funny or fascinating to show you. Even if it was someone else’s image or video or song or views or observations.

But I don’t. Sorry about that.

I’ve been fairly dull lately. Days have bled together. I wouldn’t say the days have been dull, though, because I’ve spent time with interesting people and tried to with others. I’m in one of those places, though, where I feel like nothing I do is good or even satisfactory. Where I walk around convinced that I’m a fraud at all endeavors, particularly comedy. I think about my sets, and my jokes, and wonder why these strangers show up and pretend to find them funny. I think of specific jokes and there’s nothing there, as if I feel like I’ve been dressing up a hobo in a tuxedo and told people he was the Prince of Spain. And so I feel like a conman, a fraud, who doesn’t deserve to take a stage let alone achieve the things I want to achieve with stand-up.

I’ve also been eating terrible things and hating myself for it and not working out enough, largely owing to my health of late and general drowsiness.

Also, the backspace button on my keyboard keeps sticking and it’s driving me up a fucking wall. My solution is to not make as many mistakes as I normally do typing, which for someone who is as hard on himself as I am, is both a sensible and daunting pursuit. What can I say? I’m my own worst enemy, perhaps because that way nobody else can be.

Oh, and I saw “The Campaign” tonight with roommate Steve and buddy Ethan. I liked it enough, but could tell that the best/funniest aspects were improvised. It was too broad and too light for a satire of American politics; unspecific in its dismissiveness and not cynical or biting enough to matter. But I dropped eleven dollars and Ferrell and Galifianakis (godfuckingdamn it, Zach, you made me use that sticky backspace button again) made me laugh. So did Dylan McDermott, who is criminally underused (he plays a fantastic sociopath).

Going to bed. Tomorrow I’m getting up in the morning to eat awful food with interesting people, then try to sweat out that meal, then shower and take a trip to Fonda, NY to tell jokes to people that I think shouldn’t care but might anyway, hopefully, if I can dress that hobo right.

In all seriousness, the show was top to bottom great [...]]]> Hey guys! The show I did in Lenox, MA last night was part of a series called The Happy Fun Time All-Star Comedy Variety Show. It’s curated by Thomas Attila Lewis, who OBVIOUSLY has a VERY good eye for talent.

In all seriousness, the show was top to bottom great last night and I’m sure subsequent installments will be every bit as good. Give them a like, particularly if you ever find yourself in that area.

****************

As you saw if you visited earlier today, I have another show coming up this Saturday, May 5th, where I’m featuring for national headliner Phil Selman.

The show’s at Savannah’s at 1 South Pearl Street in Albany, NY. Doors open at 6:30pm, show starts at 7:30pm. The cost is $15 for the show; $25 for the show plus dinner plus reserved VIP seating. I know the cost is a bit steep for some of you reading this, but with all the free shows I do, I think it’s more than fair. Also, there’ll be some new material.

Opening the show is Kristin VanSteemburg, a comedian who I really enjoy but is sadly leaving the area. And by leaving the area I mean this whole goddamn side of the Atlantic, as she’s soon moving to Belgium. Seriously. This could be your last chance to see her, both because she’s moving and because I’m pretty sure Belgium is a dangerous place where people drop like flies. Well, I assume as much anyway, because it’s a foreign land.

****************

After that my calendar’s empty, although limited to weekends until I go into a cage to get punched in the face by a stranger on May 12th. After that, I’m wide open!

If you own or manage an establishment or are organizing an event and like to book me for a show, click here.

Sounds accurate.

That all sounds quite dire, but [...]]]> According to Discover Magazine‘s DiscoBlog (love to love it, baaaaay-by), there might be a reason I’m such an abhorrent person. It’s called “Kevinism,” and it basically states that German people named Kevin are less desirable, less successful at online dating, and more or less ne’er-do-wells.

Sounds accurate.

That all sounds quite dire, but we’re gonna have to bust out the “correlation does not imply causation” card here. While exotic baby names may seem like a disease that most commonly afflicts celebrities, in Germany it’s really about the other end of the economic spectrum. Anarticle on Kevinism [note: this article contains a lot of German] in Die Welt quotes sociologist Jürgen Gerhards, who asserts that Anglo-American names (Mandy, Justin, Angelina to name a few more) are a lower-class phenomenon. It seems that no one has actually crunched the numbers to prove that, but jokes like “Only druggies and Easterners are named Kevin” suggest he’s on to something. (Any Germans want to weigh in?) It seems very possible that German Kevins’ smoking and lack of education has as much to do with their family background as it does with their name.

“Only druggies or Easterners are named Kevin.”

Pfsh. Germans.

Thanks to Jen (JediMama on blogspot) who made me aware of this via Facebook.