How to Commiserate

Back when I was a comedian, another comedian told me his theory of how to make it in show business.

Let me clarify.

Back when I was a comedian, almost every night, at least one comedian—and often a member of the audience or two—would tell me their theory about how to make it in show business. My favorite was a guy barely old enough to drink who told me that the key to success as a comedian was for me to rent videos of all the best comedians I could, pick out the best joke in each of their videos, then make up my act with those jokes.

But I digress. This one specific time, a comedian I respected shared a theory with me, that the amount of success you’ll have in show business is directly proportional to how willing you are to be totally ripped off. His theory was that you let your unscrupulous manager exploit you when you’re young, then you shed them like a booster rocket and use your fame as the foundation of a later career in which you take care of yourself.

It’s an interesting theory, but at the time I was just struck that I was listening to a middle-aged man who was bitter that nobody had exploited him.

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How to Graciously Receive an Honor

Deliberately leaving people problems from beyond the grave is an interesting idea. People have been doing it by accident since wills were invented. Anytime someone dies without having their house professionally cleaned, they’re leaving some sort of mess behind.

If you leave your belongings to someone you like, and they have to clean everything, you’ll seem like a kind person who lived like a pig. If you give your dirtiest belongings to someone you didn’t care for the filth will seem deliberate, and you’ll just come off as spiteful. You can decide for yourself which you’d prefer.

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How to Adapt Your Strategy

The utilities were useless. In Monopoly, I should clarify. In real life, Utilities are quite useful. In fact, that’s what the word means.

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How to Explain the Future to Your Past Self

January 15 was the 30th anniversary of Flood, by They Might Be Giants.

I’d love to say that my first exposure to the album was listening to it in its entirety, but that’s not the case. My first exposure was when a good friend who had heard the album before me was absentmindedly singing “Particle Man” to himself, and I thought he’d lost his mind.

Because time is a flat circle, I recently caught myself singing the chorus to this They Might Be Giants song while I was shopping. I’m pretty sure anyone who overheard me had questions about my mental state as well.

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How to Get Someone to Take One for the Team

In a former job, I had a coworker who liked and respected me much more than I liked and respected him. But I was pleasant and professional to him, so he didn’t realize the disparity in our attitudes. We had various managers who we reported to on different days. He had a specific problem with one of the managers, an African American woman I respected and liked. I defended her to my coworker more than once, but he was oblivious. Literally oblivious, like he couldn’t even hear my defense of her.

One day he asked me to read a letter he was sending to someone three rungs up the ladder from us, two up from the manager in question, explaining exactly why he didn’t think she should be employed by our company anymore. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought.

It was hand-written, in very large letters, and spoke specifically about how she dressed, what parts of her body her clothing accentuated, and what kind of impression her appearance gave, in his opinion. “Whore” was one of the nicer words involved.

He signed his name to this letter, by the way.

Strangely, I found myself torn. I didn’t want someone saying these things about the manager, but I knew that sending the letter would do tremendous damage to the career of the guy who sent it and, if anything, demonstrate to the higher-ups exactly what she had to put up with.

In the end I did what I thought was the decent thing and told him that he shouldn’t send the letter, because I didn’t agree with anything in it and that I thought it would reflect badly on him. To show you how oblivious he was, he came in the next day with a smug look on his face and told me he sent it.

I never saw any sign that the note caused any damage to the manager’s career, and while the letter writer wasn’t fired, he certainly never got promoted past the position he was in.

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How to Talk Someone out of Making a Wretched Mistake

I’ve driven across the entire country twice. Whenever someone tells me they’re thinking of doing the cross-country road-trip, I ask the same question. “Do you really need to?”

It’s a great question, because they can deduce what my final answer will be without them having to answer my question themselves.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beautiful, fascinating country. But man, there’s a lot of it. Like, a surprising amount. Especially Texas. We went a little crazy on the Texas, and that’s coming from someone who has driven all over Montana.

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How to Construct a Good Story

This is a true story, right down to the look on the nurse’s face when I started to ask about the pagers.

Here’s the sad thing. That clinic was in Florida. As wonky and disorganized as it could be, I’ve lived in Arizona for close to five years, and I’ve never found a clinic here I like even half as much.

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How to Find Your Motivation

I don’t really have much to say about this comic, so instead I’ll share this story from the CBS affiliate I grew up watching, about a recent event near my home town. This is for those who believe my descriptions of Eastern Washington have been exaggerated.

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How to React When You've Been Wrongly Accused of Murder

Really, any time anybody gets stabbed in the city where the Knifeketeer is active, the police would have to go at least check his alibis. Of course, Omnipresent Man and Mr. Everywhere would always be available to act as an alibis, but I get the impression they actively ignore him half the time, which would be extra frustrating.

“What do you mean you didn’t see if I didn’t do it? You were right there!”

“I wasn’t looking. I’m Mr. Everywhere, not Mr. Looks-at-everything.”

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How to Deal with Ideas That Make Your Uncomfortable

Oh, how I would LOVE to pitch this idea on Shark Tank.

“Sharks, almost everybody with disposable income in this country has lips and armpits. The potential market is huge!”

The old “potential market” argument gets them every time!

Of course, writing this comment reminded me of this scene from The Good Place.

Which reminded me of this scene from The IT Crowd.

Which reminded me of this scene from New Girl.

All of which leads inexorably to this video from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary’s own channel in which he suggests what he thinks are some great collector watches you should consider to start your collection. The clip starts right as he announces the price he paid for the first watch on his list of beginning collector’s watches. Really, you can stop it after hearing the price and you’ll have the gist of the whole video.

I would love for some cable channel to give him a show, sort of like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, only he’s the host, the rich, and the famous. Just a half hour each week of him telling us what he thinks we should think is good.

I would call the show Kevin O’Leary: Fancy, Fancy Man.

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