Attention Crash

[This is what happens when a set goes terribly wrong. I started writing this as a funny "what would happen if you got caught masturbating at work?" and somewhere it got very angry and off track. It probably should go without saying that there's no way I'd do this on stage.

I present it here because, well, I think it's important to be open about the process of writing as well as the finished product. I know it helps me to see 'behind the scenes' of my favorite writers and comics. That everything they do isn't gold. So maybe this will help some of you.]

The only thing that’s worse than getting fired from a job is not getting fired.

That isn’t to say that getting fired doesn’t suck. It does. And unless you go out with middle fingers raised to the sky, giving that final speech where you tell everyone exactly what you think of them – the speech we all rehearse every morning on the drive in. The one where you finally get to tell Betty down in HR just what you think of her cubical full of cat pictures and her fucking email memos about copier etiquette – getting fired is the ultimate walk of shame.

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Here’s the set I’m working on for this week. I hope you enjoy. As always comments are appreciated.

I got fired last week.

Over the past 14 years or so, I’ve held some cool jobs. I’ve been a network engineer. I was the creative director of a media company. The job I got fired from was barista at a coffee bar. Which hurts, because at 32 I shouldn’t even really be working in a coffee shop. And that’s the job I failed at.

I got fired because a homeless man shit himself while standing in the middle of said coffee shop, which I guess in Pennsylvania is grounds for immediate termination.

This is what happened. We had this policy where if you bring in your own cup and you didn’t have the $1.29 for a small coffee, as long as you threw us something, fifty cents or sixty cents, we weren’t going to fuck with you. You could just have the coffee.

And we had a few homeless guys who would snag cups out of the garbage and we’d rinse the cups out for them and everyone was happy.

But if you try and do something nice for people, someone will fuck it up.

This morning a guy comes in. White, late thirties, twitchy in that crackhead way and he’s just gripping the shit out of a fistful of pennies. Immediately he starts arguing with me over the cost of a small coffee. Since I can see that he’s not holding a hundred and twenty nine pennies in his hand, I tell him that if he just goes and gets a cup, I’ll give him the coffee. I don’t want his disgusting change.

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I know, I know. I’m late again with the annual Christmas Letter. And not only am I late but this year I didn’t even write the damn thing. This year I’m recycling a letter that comes from my aunt. My mom’s side of the family is Jewish and as such doesn’t celebrate Christmas but my aunt still likes to update the family with what’s been happening in her life. Normally my mom is good enough to just trash these because my aunt is crazy but this year the letter happens to feature me. And so I wanted to share it with all of you. My comments, where necessary, appear in [italics]

Another year gone by and what a blessed year it has been. At first it was a challenge to have Matt [her husband] out of work but we always look for the silver lining in any cloud. This year it was our wonderful road trip that allowed to us to see so many of you.

In addition, we’ve been able to continue our process [couple’s therapy] and I’ve kept Matt busy with all the projects that he’s put off for so many years. That awful yard has been cleared and cleaned and the garage has finally been painted. Now I truly feel like we deserve to live on the same block as Susie Miller and her wonderful husband Edward.

[Susan Miller is a woman in her late fifties who did some modeling like thirty years ago. My aunt is obsessed with her and has been trying to be her BFF for years. The really creepy part is that my aunt has every magazine and photo shoot Susan ever did and she’s more than happy to show them to guests when they come over, sort of like how you’d brag about pictures of your children. What’s worse, the Millers moved to Florida last year.]

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Last night I got up in front of a room full of comics and did my first *evar* open mic set. Here’s what I said, adapted from this (if you don’t care about the set, skip down for some specific thoughts).

When I was 18, I moved to Arizona for college … and within one semester had completely failed out of school. The only things I had going for me at the time was that I was working the register at a Jack in the Box and dating a girl who was a senior in high school and living at home with her parents. So to say that it wasn’t a real positive time in my life is sort of an understatement.

Since Arizona wasn’t working for me, I decided to move back to Philadelphia. I had barely enough money to cover the gas for the drive so my brilliant plan was to sleep in my car in rest areas so I wouldn’t have to pay for motels.

Now if you’ve ever done any long distance driving, you’ll know that this was just a disaster. I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour before I’d wake up sweaty and disoriented. And I should have know just how bad I was doing because every time I’d walk into a truck stop, and you have to remember that it’s all long distance truckers and Midwestern families out there on the interstates, I’d get these looks of horror. I’d come staggering in, surrounded by my own personal cloud of failure, and the poor clerks would have to say something like “sir, if you’re going to shop here … you’re going to need to put on some shoes.”

The other thing about long distance driving is that it’s fucking boring. So, and this is really embarrassing, but I had started masturbating while driving to pass the time.

At first the novelty of it was really exciting but soon it became just as mechanical as everything else I was doing. I’d wake up, get on the road, eat half a bag of chips, rub one out, drive for another two hours then fall back asleep.

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