Lies, lies, lies

This is a quote from Larry Poon's blog:
Ryan Conner likes to mix pound cake in with his ice cream....and then ramble on about how hard it is being good looking....and then saying "Larry, you wouldn't understand."
I think Zach Toczynski might be gay....but, I'm not a 100% percent sure.
Larry is a friend of mine, but I have to clarify what he was saying. I do like mixing cake(pound cake, yellow cake, bundt cake... it doesn't matter) with my ice cream , which has been well-documented on this site (read below for details). However, rambling about whatever? Nope. We were talking about how a disproportionate number of people who are into my comedy are very attractive girls. He said that it must be pretty cool. I said, "It's both my blessing and my curse," which is a Spiderman quote, meaning that they are there, but they are off-limits. And there's no way Zach Toczynski is gay.
It should be noted that Larry was joking and so am I.

Jokes, Fajitas and thievery

I had a show on Saturday at a Mexican restaurant that has comedy every weekend. It was packed… packed with mostly rednecks (except for about 10-15 people), but nevertheless, it was packed. It was a fun show, and Al Goodwin, who books the show, is cool.

I had a good set, but I could tell that there were certain things you couldn’t say to them. For example, I started doing a new joke of mine about a car that I saw which had a bumper sticker that read “Abortion causes breast cancer.” But something weird happened. Normally, as soon as I say that line, I can look at people and see that they realize how ridiculous that is, and they’re ready for the joke. But I looked at these people, and they were all looking at me like, “Yeah, we know abortion causes breast cancer. That’s a fact. My brother’s a scientist. He told me that!” So I aborted the joke (no pun intended). I can’t understand why anyone could accept the idea that abortion causes breast cancer, but I’m convinced that they did. If you’re making that bumper sticker, why reach that far? Just go for ovarian cancer. It sounds slightly more believable. But breast cancer? Those pipes aren’t even connected. It’s a “don’t wear contacts or you might sprain your ankle” situation. Go for pink-eye. Sounds more plausible.

Other things from the show…

There were three girls sitting in front of the comics’ table. One was normal. The other two felt the need to high-five each other after every joke they liked. Then, one time, they missed on the high five, and to reconcile, they kissed. I didn’t know high-fives and lesbian kisses were equal. Everyone was confused.

There was a guy who watched the whole show standing up. When he laughed, his whole body doubled over. You could tell how well you were doing by measuring how far he would bend. I’m not lying when I say that he touched the floor with his hands twice. This and the high-five girls are two things that happen when you mix comedy and Mexican restaurants.

After the show, the owner came up to me, and this is after I had made his patrons laugh for 25 minutes straight, and said “You shouldn’t read from notes on stage. It looks corny.” It didn’t come out like this, but the message of my reply was, “I didn’t have notes on stage. I had a set list because I was doing a lot of new stuff, and if you had a stool on stage, instead of a kid’s chair that I had to bend down to reach, no one would have noticed that I was looking at it. On top of that, if people are laughing, who cares?” But what I wanted to say was, “You know what else looks corny? Two giant palm trees on the stage that are wearing sombreros. I think that looks a little corny. Also, the fact that you’re Palestinian and own a Mexican restaurant is a little corny. Palestinians and Mexicans aren’t even similar."

Other stuff…

I have to admit that Dane Cook is the best and most innovative marketer in all of comedy. He’s also a master of the performance style of “talk loud and fast while jumping around and people will laugh.”

Before I did comedy, I thought Dane Cook was great. He was on the same level as Mitch Hedberg in my mind. Then, once I started doing standup, I listened to Dane and was like, “Where are the funny parts? He’s just talking about things that used to exist and saying, ‘Wasn’t that cool?” It's all safe, easy concepts… except when he is "influenced by" brilliant comics.

I had refused to listen to Dane’s new cd until Saturday because he bumped me from a show one time, knew that it was me that he bumped and didn’t apologize at all. Instead, he tried to sell me his headshot for $15. But, someone loaned the cd to me and I was on the road, so I popped it in. He opened the cd with a Louis CK joke that Louis has been doing for years. I finished the first of his 2 disc album and couldn’t listen any longer to his continuous string of hypotheticals, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you had a monkey/ cement truck/ were in a heist/did something crazy/ someone shit on the coats at a party/were abducted by aliens…” That’s all it was – “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and “Remember unicorns? Weren’t they awesome?” He's right. It would be cool to have a monkey, but everyone knows that.

Background: Louis CK is a great writer and comic. He’s won at least one emmy, but I think it’s more like five. He was head writer for The Chris Rock Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Chevy Chase Show, and many others. He has 2 or 3 HBO specials and two Comedy Central specials, as well as his own HBO series which is currently in production. He also wrote Pooty Tang. Comics love him because all of his material is genius. Don’t believe me? Go to www.louisck.com .

That night, I was talking to another comic who mentioned that on the other Dane Cook disc, he ripped two more of Louis’ jokes and directed me to a website where people were talking about it. I checked it out, as well as the jokes… they were 100% Louis CK jokes.

I went to the website he was talking about, which is http://www.aspecialthing.com/phpbb/portal.php . It’s a comedy message board, with regular posts from Louis CK, Patton Oswalt and many others. The thread where Louis addresses this is called “Dane Cook: Joke Thief?”

Here are some quotes from that site:

“I gotta say. I love Dane Cook. His album is like Denis Learys "No Cure For Cancer". Louis CK is great too, but Dane Cook. What a guilty pleasure. Why doesn't he have his own show yet?”
– Dane Cook fan.

The funny thing about that is that the Leary album he’s talking about is famous for containing material stolen from Bill Hicks, another comedy legend. Not good judgment on that fan’s part.

“Last night Louis CK said something like "you probably like [Dane Cook] because he reminded you about how there used to be slippity slides"
- Someone who overheard Louis talking to a Dane Cook fan at the Laugh Factory. See what I wrote above.

“I like the way he says ‘face’.”
– A comic, whose name I will not mention because I'm not sure if it's okay to talk about Dane Cook, told me that someone told him that they like Dane Cook for that reason. I wish that was made up.

“he also has a bit on this cd called "Itchy Asshole" and I have a bit on my first CD called "Itchy Asshole" I'm not going to court over a bit called "itchy asshole"”
– Louis CK discussing the stolen jokes and whether he’ll seek legal action.

“jesus. i just heard that one. Okay, this kid is stealing from me. And making lots of money. Three bits on one cd... Oh well. Whatever.”
– Louis CK after listening to the joke about naming kids a confusing string of letters.

The moral of the story is Dane Cook is a brilliant marketer and performer, but that's about it. If you disagree, listen to Louis, Hedberg, Todd Barry, Daniel Tosh, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffigan or Brian Regan.

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Frank the Tank

We were all standing backstage at the Kumite last night, just hanging out… Chris White, Rory Scovel, Justin Schlegel, Frank Hong, Zach Toczynski, Larry Poon, Erin Conroy and myself. What goes on in a greenroom full of good, young comics? Just what you’d expect: backgammon. Backgammon and herbal tea. Talk about a hoot! It was like Lollapalooza back there, except with a lot more cocaine and backgammon.

Anyway, Rory and I went first. I chose to abide by the rules and stay under the 5 minute time limit. Rory decided to do a marathon set of 10 minutes of rule-breaking, including a forged tape recording of me talking about how much I hate the show, the audience and the judges. It was really funny. The winner would be decided by the audience. According to the audience, we tied, so the mystery judge (Jared Stern) gave it to Rory. That meant I could just hang out for the rest of the night. It was a little thing that I like to call “Blessing in disguise.”

After the next matchup, Larry, Justin, me and someone else (I forgot who) went downstairs to the Cold Stone Creamery. I got chocolate ice cream with cake mixed into it. Fantastic. Larry got plain vanilla. What a loser. Justin took my advice and got chocolate with cake, and he took it to the next level and got a 32 oz. milkshake on top of that. And he’s lactose intolerant. That Schlegel’s a risk-taker.

Here’s where the blessing in disguise came into play: as we were about to get on the elevator, I heard two female voices call out, “Ryan Conner,” so I turned and guess what? The loser was halted by fans who didn’t even know that he just finished performing 50 feet from where they stood. I don’t think Rory Scovel was halted by fans. Wait a minute… was he? No, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. But what about that one girl? No, she didn’t exist… I hate Rory Scovel and his beard. I hate him so much.

Frank Hong dominated the rest of the Kumite and won.

Redemption

Last night I got redemption for the worst set ever at Soho on Monday night. I sucked so bad there. If I could erase any night of my life, that would be it. I didn’t give very much effort, but also, the crowd wasn’t even listening to me. When I first went up, I asked a couple questions so the crowd would respond and I could gauge their attentiveness. The first question, which had something to do with whether or not they were enjoying the show, got no response. And it was a lie because everyone else got a good response. Two people acknowledged the second question. There isn’t much that I hate more than an apathetic audience, so I gave them an apathetic performance. Apathy plus apathy equals a horrible set. After about 4 minutes, I said, “Okay, I’m done. Bye.” Then Paul Schorsch, the host of the show and friend of mine came up. I whispered to him, “I hate you. I hate your stupid show here. I hate all of these people, and I hope they all get scabies or some other obscure disease.” I really hated everyone in that room(except the comics) to the point that over the next two days I was constantly imagining other things they might do that I would hate, in order to validate my disgust for them. For example, in my mind, most of them whistle in the car whenever a good song is on. They eat all of their roommates’ Pop Tarts. They don’t capitalize “Pop Tarts” even though it is a brand name. They call tissues, “Kleenex,” even if they are Puffs. Just say “tissues,” you idiot. They love movies with Hugh Grant, Jennifer Lopez, Jackie Chan, Sandra Bullock and Ashton Kutcher. And they can’t wait until “Flight Plan” comes out on DVD. They are so sensitive that they get offended when someone says retarded, gay, Native American, black, abortion, tribe, race or midget, no matter the context, even though they are all acceptable words in and of themselves. They also call anyone who is black, “AFRO-American,” which I think sounds even more racist and than “the N-word.” They also call rap music and Phat Pharm clothes, “urban.” And the motive behind all of their actions is to be ironic, which I find both retarded and gay.

Anyway, I don’t begrudge them any longer. Last night at Dr. Dremos, in front of a relatively dead crowd, I did the same set from Soho, plus a couple other untested jokes and did very well. To everyone who was at Dremos, thank you for restoring my self-esteem. I bet you are all the opposite of everything I described in the previous paragraph. I love you all.

Tonight is the Comedy Kumite: Tournament of Champions at the Comedy Spot in Ballston ( www.dcstandup.com for details). It will be a very cool show. If you don’t know what a Kumite is, it is the name of the martial arts tournament in Bloodsport. So, this show is a contest, but not a serious contest. No one cares who wins, except Justin Schlegel ( www.justinschlegel.com ). The contestants have all won previous Kumites, except Chris (conspiracy? Just kidding.), and they are me, Justin, Rory Scovel, Chris White, Erin Conroy, Frank Hong, Zach Toczynski and Larry Poon. The host is Jared Stern, who is also very funny. All I can tell you is that the show will be good. Rory, Chris and I have very funny intro music. Justin and I have funny intros. And Larry Poon will win.

I forgot to mention this before, but Justin Schlegel, who is a member of the sketch group that I’m in, won the showcase at the Improv on Tuesday night. Now 5 of the 7 permanent members have won.

I have 11 brothers. I just checked the zoning regulations and it turns out that if my parents adopt one more kid, we’ll have enough to start our own bible college.

Creamy

Tomorrow is the Comedy Kumite: Tournament of Champions at the Comedy Spot in Ballston. Come to the show, or be a loser. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to do standard stuff or throw a curveball and do something Larry Poon and I talked about. Either way, there is a Cold Stone Creamery 2 floors below the club, and they are VERY generous with the toppings (even cake). One time, they gave me a dollar off, for absolutely no reason at all. If you don’t believe in heaven, go to this Cold Stone Creamery and you’ll change your mind.
To everyone who was at Soho on Monday: I’m sorry.
The White Sox will win the World Series tonight.
Better entries tomorrow and Friday, most likely with cool pictures.

comments

I just discovered how to read comments on my blog. Thanks to the people who said good things. I don't know who you are to the person who said you hate me, so I really don't care. And to the person from UMD who commented on me mentioning Bright Eyes and Jeff Buckley - respect!
More music updates... if you don't have the following, get them and listen...
Radiohead
Bright Eyes
Sigur Ros
Arcade Fire
Jeff Buckley
Billy Corgan solo album
Desaparacidos
Ryan Adams

Experimenting with hyper-links

The fonts are all messed up in this one.

I have added several shows. Check them out. If you book shows, notice that December
is fairly empty. 

The first ever stand-up show by my sketch group, Satellite, was at Topaz hotel on Saturday. It was a very cool show. Sold out. Pre-show music: The Super Bowl Shuffle by the 85 Bears. Doesn’t get any better than that.

The Bears and White Sox won yesterday. And Kirk Hinrich scored 5 points in the last 10 seconds to lead the Bulls to victory over Seattle… on my Playstation. It felt real though.

I have uploaded two pretty cool pictures. One is of the car with ridiculous 
bumper stickers, including “Abortion Causes Breast Cancer.” The other one is
of me reenacting the infamous Laguna Beach showdown between two girls, both
named Alex, at Roxx in Cabo San Lucas(I didn’t have time to make it look good,
so it actually looks like an argument between two ghosts). Notice that I had
been in Mexico for about 6 days, yet only had the tan of someone who
had just done about 20 minutes of yard work.

The Comedy Kumite Tournament of Champions (info at http://www.dcstandup.com ) will be on Thursday at the Comedy Spot in Ballston. Come out if can. It will be a really cool show. I’m going up against Rory Scovel in the first round. We were teammates in the tag-team Kumite, so come to the show and find out who the Garfunkel of this team is.

If you live in the Leesburg area, I’ll be at Del Rios this Saturday. Please come. I was there in February and my set was a wreck. They turned off the dunk contest, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Now, go tell some jokes boy.” Don’t you want to let them finish with the dunk contest first? Are you going to introduce me? “Nah. Go figure out how to turn on the mic, and start talking.” Thanks Del Rios woman. Thanks a lot. This time I will be featuring, so that won’t happen, unless the World Series stretches to Saturday. Then we will have a room full of people who want to kill us. So, please come. Last time, I’m not lying… Leesburg is a cool place… but the people at the show were 95% hicks. They all had Nascar goatees and wanted to see someone Git ‘R Done, and that isn’t really my style. So they just stared at me with this look that said, “Why ‘on’t choo jess go back up nawf, and take the [insert minority group]’s wiff ya?” Please come to this show. Please.

Huh?

The NBA should have a new rule - no more than 2 people named Malik in the league at a time. It confuses me.

What??????

I just found out that the "Lady Lumps" song is by the Black Eyed Peas. They used to be good around 98-00. That is one of the worst songs ever... If it were a vegetable, it would be a black eyed pea.

Who brings it?

Here is an interesting thing about Los Cabos, Mexico. Actually, a few things. First of all, it is called Los Cabos, not Cabo, like a lot of people say. There are, I think, 5 Cabos (Capes). I stayed in Cabo del Sol, which is in the corridor that connects San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. I rented a car from the airport. That was an interesting experience, because in the states, if you rent a car, you usually get something decent, on par with your own car, and never more than a year or two old. Not in Mexico. I rented a 1994 Nissan Tsuru. I looked it up and that car doesn’t even technically exist. I think it was a beta version of what was eventually a Sentra. I found that beta versions of products and old groceries eventually find a home in Mexico. I bought 9-11 commemorative edition coffee and peanut butter that will expire next month. Peanut butter takes like 6 years to expire!

After getting the car, I had no idea of how to get to the hotel, so I asked the guys if they had a map. “No problem, my friend,” the guy shot back (everyone there was really nice.) He then handed me a map that appeared to be a joke. It resembled a map. But not a map of a city. It looked like one of those Six Flags maps, where everything is a cartoon. There was a giant gorilla riding a ferris wheel on one corner. There was a talking seahorse at one of the restaurants. But best of all, there was only one road. There were side streets in the towns, but other than that… one road. Before looking at the map, I asked the guy how to get to my hotel. I’m not lying about the following exchange:

Me: How do I get to my hotel?

Him: Turn on dee road and go ‘til you see it.

Me: Turn on the road?

Him: Si

Me: Where?

Him: [pointing right in front of him] Dere

Me: Okay, so I turn on the road, then what?

Him: Turn into hotel.

Me: So, it’s on this road?

Him: Si

Me: That’s convenient

Him: Everything is on dee road. Es only one road.

Me: There’s only one road? What’s it called?

Him: Road number one.

Me: Thanks. I’ll see you later.

After getting in dee car, I found out there are only two radio stations, and one plays static 24 hours a day. So, there is really only “dee radio station” too. Dee radio station played a little of everything that has ever sucked, including a song that contained the lyric, “I’m gonna get you drunk of my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.” I digress.

Laguna Beach pictures, as well as other pictures, will have to wait until Monday.

I did Dr. Dremos last night. It was my first time on stage in 20 nights. It was great to be back. I have some new stuff to work out. I will be at RFD and Topaz tonight.

If you want to feel like an idiot, mention the name of a baseball park to Danny Rouhier. There’s a chance that you’ll pronounce it wrong and he will put you in your place. I’ve been a White Sox fan since 1989 when Frank Thomas’s Upper Deck rookie card came out and it looked like he was giving the camera the middle finger. Danny knew that. I told him when I went through Chicago on Monday to see the Bulls play (my version of a Mecca pilgrimage), I also drove by Cominskey Park (the old name of the White Sox’s stadium). Danny, like I just took his Lord’s name in vain, “It’s Comiskey.” Really? “Yeah, there’s no ‘n’” Oh, I didn’t know that. “Yeah, I’m not trying to be a dick by correcting you. I just don’t want you to say it to anyone else and have THEM think you’re an idiot.” Thanks Danny. Whenever you preface something with “I’m not trying to be a dick,” you are about to be a dick.

Jeff Maurer brings it.

Tomorrow:

Kumite Tournament of Champions Preview and Old Town Theater Review… also show updates…

Unite in Fellowship

FYI… the Satellite show for this Saturday has sold out. We managed to add 15 seats after it sold out and those were gone by the end of the day. If you bought tickets, thanks. If you don’t have a reservation and want to come, don’t worry. Any tickets that haven’t been claimed by 7:50 on show night will be released. Things like this usually have a 20% no-show rate. So come on down if you want to see a great show.

It has been a while since I have posted an entry. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to write everything today, so each day this week I will write about the past two weeks. I have been to Mexico, driven to St. Paul and back, not performed standup in 20 days, and had multiple dreams in which I am onstage and can’t remember any of my material. I’m standing up there looking at a set list like it belongs to someone else. “Hedgehog? What? Hedgehog? I have a joke called hedgehog? I don’t know it?” I start calling out to friends it the crowd, “How does hedgehog go?” They yell back, “Oh you know. That’s your best joke.” Then no one will tell me what the joke is, because they think I’m messing with them. Then I wake up sweating and it takes me five minutes to realize that I don’t have a joke called hedgehog, and neither does anyone else.

There are two kinds of people. There are those who are careful to call Puffy by his name of the month, and there are also people who aren’t idiots.

Chapter 2

I would be the worst Mexican ever. I stayed at a 5 star resort. They had every amenity anyone could imagine, including a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. However, they didn’t have toilet paper that wasn’t made of burlap. I’m not sure if you have ever eaten Mexican food, but it doesn’t exactly create what my friends and I call “The Perfect Shit.” No. It’s a mess and burlap isn’t good for messes. It more or less just spreads the mess around. People tell you not to drink the water in Mexico. I’m telling you, bring your own toilet paper. That was kind of nasty.

MTV has a popular show called Laguna Beach. I have seen it once. On the episode, they are in Los Cabos and had a huge fight at a club called "Roxx."I reenacted that scene and will have pictures on the site by the end of the week.

A guy in Cabo San Lucas dressed up his dog like Estelle Getty from The Golden Girls. It was wearing an old ladies church hat, glasses with the string attached, a shawl, a scarf, mittens and probably a few other accessories. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I asked the owner if I could take a picture. His mustache separated from his lower lip as he said, “Fie dollars.” Five dollars? “Si” To take a picture? “Si, senor.” I realize that I could have just taken the picture and walked away, but I didn’t want the dog to feel like she was being taken advantage of.

I saw one of the top five things I have ever seen while driving across Indiana. There was an old guy, driving a Buick. It was covered with bumper stickers. One read: “Terri was murdered.” If he isn’t a relative of Terri Schiavo, he needs to get a life. Another was my favorite: “Abortion Causes Breast Cancer” First of all, it’s a proven fact. Also, it isn’t a slap in the face of anyone who has had breast cancer. People can get breast cancer from things other than abortions, such as using aerosol hairspray or eating beans, but most of the time, it's abortion. Maybe I just liked that sticker because it reminded me of one on my car: “Condoms Cause Laryngitis.” There is a lot of science behind that sticker. I thought that it was ironic that he had at least ten bumper stickers promoting the protection of lives, when he is wasting his own by shopping for bumper stickers. I’m sorry buddy, but bumper stickers aren’t converting anyone. They are like 0 for 5,000,000,000,000,000.

Pictures of these stickers will be online by the end of the week.

Another thing in Indiana: I saw a billboard that said, “Holland Motor Homes DOMINATE.” If you know anything about me, you know I love the words dominate and fury. I’m also a fan of the phrase “unite in fellowship.”

Tomorrow will be better.

I'm back... sort of...

I am back in town and will return to regular blog activities on Tuesday or Wednesday... Many adventures will be told...
For now, I have been informed that the Satellite show at Topaz on Saturday 10/22 is almost sold out. I think there are 10 tickets left. If you want to make a reservation, email satelliteshows@gmail.com and copy me at ryanconner@gmail.com. If you have any questions about the show, you can email me too. I love you and your face.