Having now been entangled in several real life sitcom style misunderstandings, I see how Jack, Chrissy, Janet, Mr. Roper and/or Mr. Furley occasionally found themselves in a state of bewilderment.  The fact that it happened every week however seems to suggests they weren’t even trying.

My latest bout with talking to someone while simultaneously having two very different conversations happened in lovely San Luis Obispo.  I was there for the SLO Comedy Festival.  SLO is a great place but I’ve learned that no place is Mayberry.  Heck, even Mayberry probably had a seedy side. Okay maybe not.   Yes, I just used the word heck.   My acute street smarts are only matched by my earnestness.  It’s not innocence but a choice to take people’s words at face-value until I see a need not to.  This earnestness led to me being propositioned by a guy in a pick-up truck.

On the last night of the festival I walked out of my hotel.  I was going to take the 1 mile walk to downtown San Luis Obispo.  As I crossed the street a white pick-up truck rolled up.   Technically the pedestrian has the right-of-way but I’ve always felt something that weighs 2 tons and goes 90 miles per hour has the actual right-of-way.  Or at least the way that’s in my path.  The truck driver yielded.   He slowed down.  I nodded thanks and proceeded to cross.  Then he rolled again.  Not wanting to get ran over, I stopped and he stopped right next to me in the middle of the street.   Now, there were maybe 50 comics and scores of staff involved with the festival, so I thought this guy must be with the festival.  One more thing you should know is that all the comics would meet up back at the hotel to party, drink and be merry after all the shows were over.  Cue the sitcom theme song…

DRIVER:  Where’s the party.
ME:  (pointing at the hotel) Right there.  In about two hours, on the 3rd floor.
DRIVER:  I’m looking to smoke somebody out.
ME:  Again, third floor in about 2 hours.
DRIVER:  How long you here for?
ME:  I’m leaving tomorrow but I’ll be back here (pointing to the hotel) later tonight.

I tried to walk off after every answer I gave but he kept firing questions at me.  Finally, I thought “he knows every thing I know and I really must be going.”  I bid him adieu and tried to walk off.  We had finally arrived at our impasse.  It was time for Mr. Furley to blow his top and for Jack to get everybody on the same page before they all made their way to the Regal Beagle.

That’s what happens in sitcoms.  In real life sometimes head scratching is better than clarity.  The driver was either annoyed by my innocence or encouraged by my answers.  (As all my answers were basically, “The hotel”) As I tried to leave once and for all he blurted out, “Look, I’m just looking to have sex!”  Ohhhhhh.  So that’s what this was all about?  Suddenly his gum chewing became ominous.   Believe it or not, I did not see this coming.  I tried to respond strong enough to make sure he knew that I wasn’t interested or scared and really close to doing what Brooklyn people do when threatened but not be so put off so as to seem homophobic.

I simply said, “I’m not” and hit the side of his truck to tell him he should move on,  It was like I had just loaded up some cargo and was all done.  He obliged and moved on.  Turns out, this guy was not with the festival but where did he come from?  Was he just asking everyone to party?  Some questions aren’t worth finding out.  I was just happy to be rid of him.

I scrapped the walking idea and decided to drive to the show.  A person bold enough to proposition a stranger may also be bold enough to kidnap one.  I drove to the show and hopped on the last show on the last night of the festival.  That’s a happier tale.

Remind me to tell you about the time my friends thought I got a girl pregnant who actually was secretly pregnant but not by me.  (there were two girls with the same name both pregnant at the same time.) …Come and knock on our door…

My other blog about SLO

http://dwayneperkins.com/blog/2013/03/15/slo-your-roll-a-very-funny-blog-by-dwayne-perkins/

So selling DVDs at midnight at a taco trunk makes perfect sense to me.  It’s Los Angeles, it’s not like hoards of people will be walking the streets.  A Taco stand is probably your best bet to meet potential clients.

The deodorant is what threw me and everyone else in line, based on their looks after he mentioned it.  It’s possible that someone might want to watch a movie while chomping on their burrito.  I can’t imagine anyone in that line needing to smell good, STAT.  Not at least for another 7 hours.  No impulse, no impulse buy.  I pictured the street vendor defending his odd bundling earlier that day…

HUSTLER:  Look, people like watching movies, right?
HUSTLER’S FRIEND: True.
HUSTLER:  People also like smelling good, right?
HUSTLER’S FRIEND: I suppose.
HUSTLER:  I’m going to give them one stop shopping.
HUSTLER’S FRIEND:  That’s a great idea…pass the bong….

It’s not only that he had deodorant but it was they way he kept pushing it.   Like if he kept saying it the people at the truck would be swept with the revelation that deodorant was the perfect accompaniment to DVDs and this guy was a genius for helping us see what was right in front of our eyes all along.  His conviction suggested that from this moment henceforth no man would ever purchase a DVD without also picking up a Speed Stick.  Electronic stores would suddenly have a deodorant aisle.   Netflix would send sample roll-on with every rental.
Conviction is a powerful thing.  Had this guy been at the DMV line and had more time to push his politics, I’m sure the DVD/Deodorant association would have been firmly made in everyone’s mind.  He just needed more time to turn the nonsensical into the obvious.

I didn’t buy a DVD or roll-on.  I did however get to my gig in North Carolina only to discovery that I hadn’t packed my deodorant.  Who’s the crazy one now?  I’m off to CVS to buy deodorant and maybe a new release.

So some of my tweets are comedic gems. Others are reports, actual updates if you will and some fall somewhere in between. Sometimes I tweet random song lyrics without providing context. It’s easy because they’re already written and people who know the lyric feel like they’re in an exclusive, albeit non-illustrious, club. This works extremely well with hip hops lyrics. Hip Hop heads pride themselves on knowing all the lyrics to all Hip Hop songs ever made. If you flub there’s always another Hip Hop head nearby ready to revoke your Hip Hop Head status. So I post a Hip Hop lyric and then my followers who double as rap fiends chime in with either the next lines or their thoughts on the song (i.e. “I was ten when that song came out”, “that song reminds me of roller staking at The Empire back in the day”, stuff like that).

Now, “Dwyck” is an all time classic rap song. It features two of rap’s legendary groups, Nice & Smooth and Gang Starr. I posted a favorite line from that song, “Lemonade was a popular drink and it still is…” Instantly, I had dozens of comments. The rest of the verse was posted, spread out among 6 comments. Good times. Cyber reminiscing. Cyber community building. Nostalgia swelled and someone suggested I post the video to the song. Why didn’t I think of that? No really, why hadn’t I?

So I found the video on Youtube. To hear the phat beat and dope lyrics you had to first watch an ad. What struck me is that it was a Xerox ad for some high powered commercial copier. The copier promised to streamline your enterprise.  Enterprise streamlining before an old school hop hop classic? It begs the question, is Youtube’s ad assignment algorithm purely random or is classic hip hop fans the target audience for Xerox copiers.  I can see it both ways.

Maybe hip hops heads from twenty years ago are now making IT decisions.  Maybe people go to the video to jam and stumble upon a solution to making next quarter’s budget.  Everyone grows up, hopefully.  I wonder what goes through the minds of those who look up the video to rock out to songs of yesteryear, see the Xerox ad and actually find it useful.  Is the nostalgia tainted by the reality of their responsibilities.  Or is the nostalgia heightened because they thought they’d never get old yet here they are sending a link of a rap song to their operations guy and not for him to listen to the phat track (or should I say dope beat?)

DWYCK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r12qrwJe8g

*Hot Chocolate Any One? Quick Side Note: My ebook, “Hot Chocolate for the Mind” is up on Amazon.  A collection of my funniest and most touching blogs.

Please buy my ebook at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATCKEFK

No Kindle, No Problem: Free Kindle Apps Here http://amzn.to/nuQtcH

Smack dab in between Los Angeles and San Francisco, off route 101, lies a beautiful town called San Luis Obispo (SLO).  It’s the kind of place that, as soon as you get there you start figuring out ways to stay forever.  Maybe cash in on your 401K or see if the local bike shop is hiring.  Visiting SLO is like sitting in first class, one taste and you dread going back to the stuffy coach cabin that is LA or SF.  SLO somehow gets perfect weather.  It’s not cold like SF, not a glorified desert like LA.  In SLO the air is crisper, the birds sing sweeter, and people seem to smile a bit wider.  So of course, it’s the perfect place to have a comedy festival.

Bring in some comics to celebrate the city while poking at the status quo.  Bring in some comics to push the limits of debauchery.  I started for team “Poke status quo.” I came off the bench for team “Celebrate.”  Team “Debauchery” cut me but they thanked me profusely for trying out.

The SLO festival is a comic’s festival.  A place for comics to convene and put on killer shows without worrying about their sitcom pitch.  The only concern is making people laugh.  It would be like a professional athlete being allowed to play the game he loves while getting a reprieve from interviewing and product photo shoots.  SLO is our reprieve.  The winner is the crowd.  They get the pure uncut, with enough venues and comedic styles to tickle almost everyone’s fancy, minus the “Hollywood” factor since there’s little industry there to taint the proceedings.  It’s like going dancing when hooking up is completely off the table.  You really dance like no one is watching because, well, no one is watching.

Comedy for comedy’s sake.  What a novel thought.  Besides the festival taking place in a postcard the comic camaraderie was palpable.  The LA comedy scene is amicable but not exactly supportive.  The ever present perceived possibility of “instant” stardom makes it weird.  Everyone is smiling while constantly keeping score of who’s in the lead.  It’s hard to root for yourself without rooting against your would be competition.

The SLO comedy festival was a cease-fire from the weirdness.  A “friendly”, if you will.  The best part for me was when I was thrown up on a show I wasn’t booked on.  The other comics began to call for me to grace the stage.  I think I was the senior comic at the festival.  If not by age then probably by comedy years and credits.  My fellow comics chanted my name.  People shouted out which of my bits they wanted to see.  I was a greatest hits comedy karaoke machine.   I was really just going to San Luis Obispo for some sunshine and r&r* and ended getting honored by my fellow comics.  I kinda knew I had their respect it was warming to feel their admiration.  Not a life time achievement award but I’ll take it.  I’ll definitely take it.

I’ll save the story about getting propositioned in SLO by a guy in a white pick up truck for another blog.  This one is about good vibrations.

Big thanks to Eric Shantz for running one of the best comedy festivals going.

* r&r: rest and relaxation

Hot Chocolate Any One?

Quick Side Note:

My ebook, “Hot Chocolate for the Mind” is up on Amazon.  A collection of my funniest and most touching blogs.   Please buy my ebook at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATCKEFK

No Kindle, No Problem: Free Kindle Apps Here

http://amzn.to/nuQtcH

I know the difference between irony and coincidence but fixing what Alanis and many others have started is a tall order.  That ship has sailed.  We have collectively changed the meaning of the word irony.

So I called “Irony” when an elderly lady stole my reduced fat turkey bacon sandwich in Starbucks the other day.  It’s ironic (but not really) because I have a joke where I advocate commandeering others’ orders at fast food places.  In my joke I at suggest waiting until the same order is called 3 times.  Who knows maybe the person left.  Right?  Right?  In real life the old lady moved fast as lightening. The barista barely got the words “reduced fat” out of her mouth before the blue haired bandit swooped in and swiped it from her hand.  It was done so quick and with such decisiveness that we all paused and thought “it must be hers.”  There’s no substitute for confidence and in the seconds it took me and the baristas to work out in our heads that grandma had in fact not ordered a reduced fat turkey bacon sandwich, grandma was long gone.   No one spoke for a moment then I broke the ice with a statement disguised as a question…

ME: Umm, I think maybe that lady…

BARISTA: She took your reduced fat turkey bacon sandwich didn’t she!?

ME: So it would seem.

The thief’s clothes was as disarming as her speed and precision.  She had on a stylish girl blazer and a silk-ish scarf.  She stuffed the breakfast sandwich into what looked like a high end purse.  My guess would be Dooney and Bourke.  Why would someone like her steal Starbuck’s version of an Egg McMuffin.  That’s the genius of it, I guess.  All those questions bought her enough time to make off with my breakfast.

You slow, you blow.  But just like in my joke when I remind the crowd that you’re ultimately stealing from the store and not the person,  Starbucks made me another sandwich.  It would have been cool to eat my sandwich with the smooth criminal (while she ate my other sandwich.)  I could’ve picked her brain.  We could’ve shared notes.  Maybe plan a heist together.  There’s a Whole Foods up the street.

The goal of the comedian, as I see it, is to explore non-obvious truths OR explore obvious truths in a unique way.  So jokes about leaving the toilet seat up are tough to pull off because they contain obvious truths that are hard put in a new light.

As a comic, you know you’re on the right track when people come up to you after the show with stories that corroborate your act.  (Shout out to “Law and Order” for teaching me the word “corroborate”).  Hearing audience members say, “That one joke you did was so true…” is music to my ears.  It lets me know my act will stay with them and long after I’ve left town the laughs will live on.

I have a joke about smart phones taking away our ability to lie.  Every stat, every historical event can be cued up in seconds.  Good for accuracy, bad for fun interaction.  Our phones are like mobile judges and when we google things, it’s like we’re approaching the bench.  In my act I joke about how 12 years ago you could tell someone a famous figure was born with six fingers on one hand.  A fun lie that could not be corroborated or disproven and ultimately wouldn’t hurt the person you were talking to.  The crowd eats it up.  You really should see me do the joke as I’m doing it no justice here.

After the show a guy came up to me and told me HE was born with six fingers on one hand.  Can someone Google the odds of that happening!  Score 10 for truth.   I was trying to be completely random just to prove a point and in that randomness I tapped into this guy’s life story.  He was cool with the joke, thank God. He also had a best friend whose first name was “Dwayne” and another whose last name was “Perkins.”  I’ve grown accustomed to these odd coincidences.

Shout out to Thumper in Long Beach.  Thanks for the music.  Perhaps I need to go more random with that joke.  Cue the unicorns.

I think the lights going off reminds us how fragile we are and how precarious civilization is.  We’re just one catastrophe away from being the start of an Man vs Wild episode. When the lights go out two impulses run through our heads, to either rebuild civilization like our cavemen ancestors did or go for broke.  We really only have one choice when you think about it.  Like two rappers with fledging fan bases, we must collaborate.  Prehistoric men had it pretty rough and that’s why they chose to work together.  We don’t value the collective because none of us has ever had to kill a moose with a tree branch.  Go kill a moose with a stick and then come back and tell me how you’re self made.

The Superbowl outage was a unique case of us banning together via technology.  The lights in our houses didn’t go out.  In fact, we were still tweeting.  So we got the rare chance to share an outage while still on the grid.  Even submersed in light, we still felt the need to connect when faced with a black out.  And for once social media became well social.  Not a bevy of single nodes barking to the others about their day or what they had for breakfast.  No, for 34 minutes the web became a bar, a living room, a camp fire with people all chiming in on the same subject.  For once the receiver of information cared about what the sender was saying because it was a shared moment.  Social media seems normal but go to a party and blurt out personal facts to people without responding to what they say.  See, not normal at all.

With hundreds of television stations, it’s not often we’re guaranteed that everyone is watching the same thing.  That’s why we must still sit down in the same room with other people from time to time and actual human interaction.  And for God’s sake man, don’t wait until the lights go out again to do it.

The Superbowl wasn’t my first dark rodeo.  I once braved a black out in South Africa.  Read about it in my book “Hot Chocolate For the Mind”  or here….

When The Lights Go Down in The City

My best tweets from the blackout:

• Finally, Baltimore has something other than “the Wire” to be proud of #superbowl
• I’m going to start kissing my bicep after every tweet. #HCFTM
• if the Niners win their parade song should be “Electric Slide” #superbowl
• I think Bane did this. #superbowl
• Hey CBS guys. You seem stuck for ideas. Just read our tweets. #superbowl
• You kill unions, you get SuperBowl power outages!

While the guy helping me was in the back looking for my mail that wasn’t there, a person came in with a large envelope with 4 stamps on it.  Not wanting to wait in the long line, he handed the envelope to a clerk and said…

GUY SENDING LETTER:  Is there enough postage on this?

The clerk held the letter out in his hand, feeling the weight like you would two oranges that cost the same but you were inclined to get the one that weighed more.  Even if it weighed just a few ounces more.  And without putting the envelope on a scale the clerk said:

POST OFFICE CLERK:  You’re gonna need one more stamp.

Assuming that the clerk wasn’t being flippant, that’s an amazing ability to be able to tell  how much an envelope weighs to the nearest stamp count.  Seems this clerk may be able to tell face cards from number cards and go make a killing in poker games (Face cards have more ink on them thus weigh more)

I wonder if he’s married and does his ability to weigh things help or hurt him.

CLERK’S WIFE:  Do you think I’ve gained weight?

POST OFFICE CLERK:  Well, to send you first class it would take 27 more stamps than before…on the other hand to send you express would cost the same.  What do you mean you don’t wanna go out anymore?

Hot Chocolate Any One?

Quick Side Note:

My ebook, “Hot Chocolate for the Mind” is up on Amazon.  A collection of my funniest and most touching blogs.   Please buy my ebook at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATCKEFK

No Kindle, No Problem: Free Kindle Apps Here

http://amzn.to/nuQtcH

Some people jumped into the adjacent cars.  A surprising number of people stayed in that car.  Well, probably not surprising given the average New Yorkers smell threshold.  Of the people who stayed: some covered their noses, others slept, some seemed impervious to the whole thing.  One lady looked around for acknowledgement she needed someone to agree with her that this smell was present.  She held out a hand and looked around as if to say “It’s not just me right?!  It stinks in here right?!” Maybe she used to smell things that weren’t there as a child and can never again fully trust her olfactory system.  Note to self: Write outline for a movie called, “A Beautiful Nose.”

The woman found agreement in a couple standing near her.  The woman was clearly in pain.  The man was smiling ear to ear as he said, “I have a cold so I can’t smell anything.”  I thought to myself, “where’s your compassion buddy?”  Then I realized if he wasn’t smelling then he wasn’t breathing through his nose and if he wasn’t breathing through his nose then he was breathing through his mouth.  Call that instant Karma.  Whatever ills wafted through the air were going straight into his lungs unfiltered.  Let’s just hope that smell doesn’t affix itself to your tongue.

I only had to go one stop so I powered through. I just hope that smell doesn’t stay in my clothes.  Like the way cigarette smoke stays in your hair well after you’ve left a smoke filled room.  Or when you leave a soul food restaurant smelling of hammocks.  And your friends remind you that soul food restaurants have doggie bags and you didn’t have to smuggle gizzards out in your jacket pocket.  And then you vow to not sit close to the kitchen again even if it means sitting by the door and going into pre-hypothermia every time it opens.

Maybe I should go to a soul food restaurant to cancel out the subway train smell.

Hot Chocolate Any One?

Quick Side Note:

My ebook, “Hot Chocolate for the Mind” is up on Amazon.  A collection of my funniest and most touching blogs.   Please buy my ebook at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATCKEFK

No Kindle, No Problem: Free Kindle Apps Here

http://amzn.to/nuQtcH

Happy New Year! I want to thank you for your support over all these years. My years of writing funny blogs has lead to this moment:

The release of by new Ebook: Hot Chocolate for The Mind 
(A Collection of funny stories from Comedian Dwayne Perkins)

Please click on the link below and buy my ebook. It’s priced low but the laughs are mighty. It’s been my pleasure to provide you with the laughs over the years and now I ask you to buy this book and help my Kindle ebook ranking. The book is well put together and the cover page is bananas! (Notice, my face is in the spoon. A very awesome detail thought up by the cover designer, “Action” Dave Kessler.)

Buy Hot Chocolate For the Mind: 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATCKEFK

If you are a reader of my blogs, please leave a review at your leisure. Either way please click on the box on the first or second review that’s already on my Book’s page and click that the review was helpful.

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