The Liam McEneaney Experience

I had to take my computer in to be repaired. And the guy behind the counter told me it would take "four business days."

When I got home, I realized that that store is a business open seven days a week. So technically, every day is a business day, right?

I mean, if you walk in on a Sunday, do they say, "GOLLEE! We shore cain't fix yore compooter, we gone fishin'!"

I did the above joke onstage last night and - the audience was less-than-impressed. Ah well, fa fa fa.

* * * * *

Today's my last day guest-blogging for Comedy Central. Relive the good times here.

* * * * *

My friend Chris DeLuca is a brilliant writer which you can see for yourself at his blog, What Sucks, that breaks down pop culture every day.

* * * * *

There's this guy in LA, an old comedy writer named Ken Levine, who has worked for every major sitcom and is apparently also a MLB play-by-play voice. Dude, stop living all my dreams! Anyway, I don't know him, but I do love his blog - as an old comedy writer, he is really able to break down TV in an interesting, funny, and relevant way.

* * * * *

And what the hell, you should check out this coming Monday's Tell Your Friends. We've got Joe Garden, who is a writer/editor at The Onion. And some other funny mofos!

I have an older sister, and sometimes we argue, and sometimes we don't get along. But there's a bond that keeps us together - no matter how annoying we find each other, no matter what either of us says and does, we have to love each other and talk to each other, because if we don't, we're going to hear about it from our mom. And as annoying as it is to deal with each other, it's not as annoying as a mother's nagging.

There's a great story about it in the Bible. You see, Moses spent forty years leading the Hebrew people through the desert, looking for the Promised Land of Milk and Honey. Until he found it - Israel.

Now, I'm not sure if Israel really was the Promised Land, or if Moses was just tired of wandering around with his Jewish relatives looking for it. Because I have Jewish relatives, and after being lost with them for forty minutes I've been ready to stop at the first place I see. "Okay, we're at the restaurant."
"Are you sure? This looks like a gas station."
"Yeah, it's a theme restaurant. Trust me, those pumps give out milk and honey. Wait here, I'll be back in twenty years."

I can't imagine what Moses went through:
"Moses, didn't we pass that mountain two days ago?"
"No, uh, that's a different mountain. That's Mount Ar-er-at."

And that's how all those Bible places got their names:

"Moses, that is the same mountain. You're lost."
"No. That's Mount Ar-arm-al-ah-mah. Mount Ararmalahmah. It means 'I hate my family' in Hebrew."

Now, before I go further, here's a fun Bible fact: Moses had a younger brother named Aaron.

Think about that for a second. Moses, the Old Testament classic Messiah, talked to a burning bush, led his people out of bondage through the Red Sea, talked to God Almighty Himself - had a younger brother.

I was competitive with my sister when she got better grades than me, I can't imagine how those family dinners went:
"So Moses, how was your day?"
"Good. I ran into a burning bush, turned it was God who wants me to defy Pharoah and warn him there's going to be a plague of frogs and slaying of the first-born in every Egyptian house and then help my people flee their bondage."
"Uh-huh. And how about you, Aaron?
"I got a haircut!"
(beat)
"That's - great.
"See? Looks pretty sharp, right?"
"Uh-huh. Moses, what was that about 'fleeing bondage'?"

And then that night, Aaron says to himself, "Stupid Moses with his stupid God. 'I talk to the Lord.' I could be the Messiah, but I don't feel like it."

And after forty years of wandering, Moses said, "Here we are. Yup, see that arid, lifeless desert surrounded by Arabs who hate us? God wants us to live here."
"Moses, are you sure? That looks like -"
"Sinai. It's Mount Sinai. And it's our new home."
And the Jews didn't complain, because they knew that even if they Summered in the mountains, they could still Winter down in Florida.

So the Hebrews are camped out, and Moses says, "Okay gang, I gotta go up Mount Sinai a bit and chat with God a little bit. He wants to work out some Commandments or something. I'll be back in a couple of days, but meanwhile, Aaron's in charge. Whatever you do - don't start worshipping anything, especially false Gods. Got that?"

And Moses goes up Mount Sinai and starts working with the Lord -
MOSES: "Okay, so we got Thou Shalt Not Murder and Thou Shalt Not Steal. How about, 'Thou Shalt Not Try to Squeeze Thy 300-Pound Body Into A Size Medium Shirt'?"
THE LORD: "I DON'T KNOW, I WANTED TO GET SOMETHING ABOUT COVETING IN THERE."
MOSES: "All that coveting stuff's good and all, but then we don't have room for Thou Shalt Not Use Thy Cell Phone At The Movies."
THE LORD: "DO WE REALLY NEED THAT? I THOUGHT IT WAS A GIVEN."
MOSES: "Trust me. I love people, I am a people, but let's be honest, they're assholes."

Meanwhile Aaron's down with the Hebrews and, being a little brother, he says, "Stupid Moses. 'Don't worship anything.' I'm not stupid. Anyway, who cares if I want to worship something? I'll worship whatever I want. In fact - attention everybody. I've got a great idea. We're going to melt down all our gold jewelry and make it into a cow we can worship."

Now, history doesn't record exactly how the Hebrew people reacted to this, but if they were anything like my family, it probably went like this:
"Our gold? The boy's meshuggah. How about brass? Can we use brass?"
""But gods are made out of gooold."
"Or how about chopped liver? We can make a nice centerpiece..."

And eventually, Aaron collected enough gold to make a very small calf. And everyone started worshipping it - except the Tribe of Levy who said, "Uh-uh. Now way, Jose. We've seen God get pissed. Plague of frogs, slaying of the first-born. We're going to take a pass at pissing him off."

And that's when Moses came down the mountain and said, "Hey guys, I got some great Commandm - what the? Aaron, what did I tell you to not do? What was the one thing I asked you to not do before going up the mountain? What was the one thing I said not to worship, huh?"

And Aaron, being a little brother, said, "They made me do it. I didn't wanna worship a golden calf, but they told me to!"

And then Moses told the Tribe of Levy to kill every other man woman and child in the Hebrew camp, because he had a very strict "One strike and you're out" policy. And they killed everyone in that camp, except - Aaron.

Because really, how would he explain it to his mother?

"Moses, where's your brother?"
"He, um, he got - *cough* massacred."
"He got what?"
"Massacred mom, okay? He transgressed God's Law. What could I do?"
"Well. You do what you want, but you just know - I'm very disappointed with you. I mean, I carry you for nine months in the Egyptian summer and this is the thanks I get."

If there's one thing Moses, the Messiah, feared more than the Wrath of God - it was facing his angry Jewish mother:

Whew. I've been working on this for a while, definitely one of those "either going to hit hard and be genius or die a horrible death onstage" bits. But I won't really know until I try it onstage. All I have to do is find a show that will let me test a brand-new twenty minute piece.

* * * * *

And speaking of the way religion changes folks' lives, here's an episode of The Simpsons you won't see on TV if you live in New York City - it's called Homer vs. New York, and much of the action takes place in and around the Twin Towers. It's a shame, as it's pretty damn funny:

PART I:



PART I:

I guest-blog for Comedy Central this week Here's a link to right here. Today's entry is based on a true thing I did last week to help my friend Christian Finnegan

* * * * *

Proof that people who work with the homeless aren't necessarily good people:

I saw a homeless guy walking in front of the hospital in my neighborhood. Crazy hair sticking out, dirty, shambling, And wearing a t-shirt he'd been given. It read: "Proud to be a MUTANT!"

* * * * *

Tell Yoru Friends! went really well on Monday, but there was an awkwardness before the show when I had to help eject a couple of college kids who didn't have any IDs. And I had no sympathy, mostly because what kind of college student goes to school in New York and doesn't make getting a fake ID their number one priority?

I mean, it's not like it's hard to find someone willing to sell you one. In fact, when I was eighteen and hanging around in Manhattan, I had to keep turning down storeowners' repeated attempts to sell me drivers licenses. The one I can definitely tell yo uabout, because the store no longer exists, was the old "SMOKE SHOP" next to the West 4th street subway entrance, which is now a Pita Pit.

It was one of those dreadful West Village stores that sells bongs ("For tobacco use only" wink wink) and those shirts where one skeleton is going down on another skeleton and it says, "GET A JOB," which makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I needed an ID fast, because I'd gotten a crappy-ass job and they wanted a photo ID for to put with my tax forms. So I figured I'd just pay twenty bucks for a quick photo/laminate job, and when I asked the guy behind the counter to make me one, he looked around, like a cartoon character checking to see if the coast is clear, and then said, "I think you want one of this," and he went to a pile of sweatshirts on the wall behind the counter, lifted the second one and showed me sandwiched between them an NYU ID, and said, "You want one of these? A hundred dollars."

And I told him no thanks, just a shitty clearly-fake $20 ID is what I wanted. And they were evn more puzzled when I kept insisting I wanted my correct birth date on that thing.

I was reminded of this last other night, a high school kid in my neighborhood asked me to go into 7-11 and buy him beer, and I said no. And afterwards I asked myself why I wouldn't do it.

It's not necessarily that I'm against underage drinking; hell, I'd be a real hypocrite lecturing kids about the evils of alcohol (I've thoguht about doing a "Scared Straight" program, where I go into the schools and lecture kids: "So, you want to drink, and you want to have a good time, huh kids? Well, you'd better know how to hide it from your parents. First of all, Trident gum..." I believe it would be very popular with the kids).

I realized that I truly have this attitude: "When I was your age, we bought our own beer, and we liked it."

I mean seriously, you live in Queens and you can't find someone to sell you alcohol? Of course you're not getting any at 7-11, there's too many corporate guidelines. But you're telling me that you can't find one of those subsistence farmer-type 24-hour bodegas barely scraping by their fingernails who would sell human slaves if they could get any cheap and off-brand? Or a shady bar/pool hall/crappy little restaurant licensed to sell beer in Ozone Park, say, or Sunnyside, where the only number they look at is the big "20" next to Andrew Jackson's head?

* * * * *

Speaking of hubris, back in the '80s, ABC decided that it could take on The Cosby Show head-on with a show called The Charmings, a sitcom about fairy tale characters. ABC was wrong, a fact which the ntwork promo departmen underscored with its "we give up before we even try" ad campaign:



An interview with a kid back in the '60s whp was given acid, talking about his experience (according to the narrator, kids as young as 9 were given the drug).. It does clear up one burning question: are naturally boring people drawn to being hippies, or is it the drugs that makes them yammer on about the cosmic significance of everything?

Don't forget - I'm guest-blogging at the Comedy Central website all this week.

Here's a link to my first entry.

* * * * *

I have a fantastic diet - instead of getting into better shape, I just waited for the rest of America to get morbidly obese.

* * * * *

I was in a conversation with a woman the other night, and whenever I get into a conversation, I always make the mistake of listening to what the other person is saying, and I always end up getting upset.

And at one point she said, "I hardly ever have sex because it's so hard to find a man who can keep up with me."

And I thought, "Damn, how fast are you going in the bedroom? Are you running a pace car in there or something? I mean, I'm fast enough on my own."

Anyway, I ended up going home with her, and sure enough, there were people lined up beside her bed handing her cups of water. Also, she was sponsored by Nike. And something about ESPN2 right here.

I was able to keep up with her, but only because I was riding a Segway.

* * * * *

Speaking of America going to hell in a handbasket, I'm sure you've seen this bfloating around online already. But if you haven't, here's President Clinton on FOX News Channel giving it back to one of their smarmy attack dog "journalists." It's so rare and refreshing to see a Democrat refusing to just roll over and play nice for their attacks.

So I left my comedy notebook at a theatre where I did a show tonight, but the good news is that it has been recovered, which mean that no one can steal my sure-to-catapult-me-to-riches-and-self-loathing sitcom spec script idea (when Tim is accused of murdering the Tool Time girl, his only hope for acquittal is a cat name Captain Cuddle-Muffins).

So, in lieu of my usual hilarious jokes:

I am a guest blogger for Comedy Central all week long.
When they post my first entry, I'll link directly to it. Meanwhile, you can check out their blog, the Comedy Central Insider until it goes live.

* * * * *

Memo to the Duggar Family:
Please stop fucking. Seriously. Sixteen kids is ridiculous. Jesus doesn't want you overtaxing the Earth like that.

* * * * *

Went to a Costco Warehouse Store for the first time this weekend
Or as I like to call it, "This Is Why They Hate Us."

Fifty percent of the earth is starving, and meanwhile here in the US of A, there's a store for people who need to buy a seven gallon drum of mayonnaise every other month.

I actually saw this guy pushing a double-wide shopping cart filled with a three-pack of chickens and whole hams and a huge box of cookies. He was pushing the cart with one hand while eating a sandwich with the other.

Now, I have my problems with impulse ontrol, especially when it comes to eating, but this was a guy who couldn't stop eating long enough to finish shopping for the food that he was taking home to eat.

* * * * *

AND CHECK OUT THIS SHOW:

MONDAY, SEPT. 25, 2006
Tell Your Friends! 1st Anniversary Show!
at the Lolita Bar
226 Broome St., corner of Allen
8:00pm - FREE

HOST: BARON VAUGHN

WITH:

DEMETRI MARTIN
from "The Late Show with David Letterman," "Late Night w/ Conan O'Brien," "The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart," "Comedy Central Presents" 1/2-hour special, and he has a new album dropping on Tuesday.

JOHN VIENER
writer for "Family Guy"

CHRISTIAN FINNEGAN
has been seen on his own "Comedy Central Presents" half-hour special, he's your favorite commentator on VH1's "Best Week Ever," he was Chad The White Guy on Chappelle's Show's "Mad Real World Sketch," and much more.

LIAM McENEANEY
from Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," VH1's "Best Week Ever," and was a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"

THE HAZZARDS
have appeared on Comedy Central's "Out on the Edge" hosted by Alan Cumming, and on Comedy Central's "The World Stands Up." Their video "Gay Boyfriend" was an Internet sensation, getting over one million downloads in its first three months live on the InterWeb; it was later remixed as a EuroPop Dance tune, and reached the UK charts at #67, ahead of some crap song by Seal. They played at the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors for Steve Martin.

THE O'DEBRA TWINS
These ladies are insane, and insanely talented. You will be captivated, I'm sure.

And our house band A Brief View of the Hudson!

* * * * *

Speaking of not much in particular, this is a world that truly needs a singer/songwriter like Phil Ochs; committed, passionate, and caring to the point that his obsession with bringing justice to the world eventually drove him mad. Instead we've got turds like John Mayer singing songs like "Waiting on the World to Change," a paen to apathy

Here's a clip of a young Phil Ochs singing his classic protest anthem, I Ain't Marchin' Anymore:



And here's Marianne Faithfull singing his song, There But For Fortune:



Here's They Might Be Giants on One More Parade:



And finally, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder singing an updated version of Here's to the State of Mississippi:

This story is crazy long, so I'm not going to list the Tell your Friends! first anniversary party show here. Instead, you can find the lineup, including Christian Finnegan and The Hazzards, HERE.

* * * * *

In order to explain just how awful the job of doing market research over the phone is, I have to start by explaining that I have a fantastic system for paying bills when I don’t have enough money; I just sit there and hope that some job comes up that wants to pay me a large amount of cash. What’s scary isn’t so much that I rely on this system, but that it works as often as it does.

For example; years and years ago, I had fallen into making food money by doing lights and sound for various shows that were so Off-Broadway that the more honest name for them would have been “In Hudson River.” The phone company had given me ten days to pay a two hundred and forty-nine dollar bill, or my service was going to be shut off. I had seventeen dollars in my bank account, and maybe another seven in change on my nightstand. This was my first-ever shut-off notice, and I was genuinely frightened. For some reason, I had this mental image of two large phone company goons breaking down the door to my apartment, ripping all of the phone cords out of the walls, breaking the receivers in front of me and saying, “See? Dis is what happens when youse crosses Ma Bell.”

I was doing tech for my friend Todd’s, and after a particularly good show, his friend Dave approached the tech booth. He said to me, “Oh my God, you were great! You got all the music cues and blackouts perfect! I’m doing a live off-Broadway production of two episodes from The Odd Couple next week and I need a tech guy. Would you do it for two hundred and fifty dollars?”

Several years later, and now I have a roommate. Consolidated Edison has been threatening my electric flow for a few months now, but at this point I have become jaded to the whole process. Turn off my electricity? Ha! I’d like to see them try it! Don’t they know what happens to utility companies that mess with Liam McEneaney? And besides – the Universe was going to provide me with the money I needed, when I needed it.

I’d been looking for steady day work for several months. As a comedian, I needed a job that had enough hours that I could pay my bills, yet flexible enough that I could leave for a few days if something better came up. This meant spending a lot of time on the Craig’s List part time/etcetera section, competing with thousands of people for the three jobs that sounded like they weren’t a complete scam.

Out of frustration, I placed my own fake Craig’s List ad, claiming that I ran a company providing the service of sifting through organic waste for contraband that people had swallowed, or valuables that pets had eaten, thinking I had invented the one completely demeaning job that no self-respecting person would want. Forgetting who was looking for work on Craig’s List.

Within the first two hours, I received three hundred responses. Over the next month, I got hundreds upon hundreds more, over a thousand, all with resumes, many misspelled, many who ended up following-up because they hadn’t heard from me and they were very interested in getting started in the exciting field of sifting through shit for hours in search of something of value. Little realizing that, by searching Craig’s List for a worthwhile job, they already had.

A friend had told me about Universal Survey Center, a market research firm that held open job interviews every day, and while market research was not my first, fifth, or nineteenth choice – to digress for a second, I did market research when I started comedy, when I was about twenty. I was still in college at the time, and to accommodate my schedule I worked an all-weekend shift; six hours Friday night, thirteen hours on Saturday and seven hours on Sunday morning. I couldn’t keep up five days of school followed by twenty-four hours of market research AND nights doing unpaid open mikes, so I really had no choice but to quit going to college. I ended up working on the day shift, and quitting after one of my bosses told me that I had the potential to be a supervisor there.

Consolidated Edison shut off the electricity in my apartment while my roommate was still sleeping, and I put on my one nice button-down shirt and hauled ass out of there for a job interview at the market research place. On the F train, I caught my reflection in the window and noticed that I had a weird, patchy Amish farmer under-beard. Now, I’m not sure why I felt the need to look my Wall Street very best for a shitty phone job that pretty much had an all-day process of hiring people literally off the street. But I really wanted to ace the interview.

So when I got off the train, I went to Duane Reade and bought a sample size of shaving cream and a disposable razor. Luckily, I already had a place picked out to shave – one thing about the New York Public Library system is that anyone can use it. Which means that on any given day, you’ll find a homeless person bathing in the men’s room sink. I figured, what’s acceptable for the homeless is great for borderline cases like myself.

But as I lathered up in the men’s room mirror, I had a small panic attack. What if I was caught by an elderly gentleman, a benefactor of the library, who then called for security, a large hulking man who kicked me out of the New York Public Library, shaming me in front of the stately stone lions, in front of the spirits of all the great American men of literature whose works call this institution their home, yea in front of the very homeless guys on their way in for their weekly bath?

So I did what any rational person would do – I took my shaving gear and my freshly-lathered face into one of the stalls. I started shaving over the toilet, and I gave myself a pat on the back for my genius. I was almost done with the right side of my face when I felt something warm and wet smear my finger as it slid down my cheek. I instinctively checked the razor, and the blade was dark red. I used one of the tissue-thin pieces of toilet paper to daub at my face, and it almost disintegrated in a pool of deep red blood. I wanted to check out the damage, but oddly enough, the New York Public Library system doesn’t have shaving mirrors installed in their bathroom stalls.

I walked out of the stall to check my reflection above the sink. I could have saved myself the trip; the look on the face of the guy peeing in the urinal told me more than any mirror could. Sure enough, I had cut myself in three places on the right side of my face. Now I was faced with a dilemma; stop shaving and show up to this job interview with half a beard on, or continue shaving in the stall and show up to this job interview looking like I’d just come off of fighting a band of ninjii.
Since my roommate had already woken up and was undoubtedly pissed at finding the electricity turned off – I’d ignored two calls from her by this point – going home was not an option. So I decided to finish shaving and wait in for my wounds to heal. After all, I had a book I’d just started, and the toilet seat was designed to theoretically be comfortable to sit on. The only problem with this plan was that I then gouged the hell out of my chin, and the bleeding didn’t even slow down to a trickle for an hour. I had to call the place to make sure that it was cool if I came in an hour late for my appointment, and naturally they didn’t give a shit.

I showed up chin still bleeding, shirt spotted with dried shaving cream and blood, and fifteen minutes later, I walked out a brand-new employee of Universal Survey Center.

Within two weeks, I was ready to move on. Cut to a year later, and I was still stuck in the job I’d decided to only hang onto until my comedy career took off. All of my coworkers were really sweet, and really on welfare, and – here’s two real-life announcements my supervisor had to make to all the employees on the day shift, to illustrate exactly how ghetto my work environment was:

1) “I don’t know why I have to tell y’all this, but there is something we call ‘soap.’ When you take a shower in the morning, don’t just stand under the water. Use the soap. And deodorant. You have to use deodorant. And if I find y’all coming in stinking from now on, I’m going to have to send you home.”

2) “I don’t know who smeared their tampon all over the walls of the ladies room. I don’t want to know who, or why. Please don’t tell me. Just don’t do it no more.”

I decided to bone up on my temp skills, and enter the exciting world of sitting behind a desk and doing nothing. But I hadn’t saved enough money to quit my job. To illustrate how little money I made, one week there wasn’t enough work, so I’d been sent home. It took a lot for them to do that, by the way. I was so good at this awful job of bothering strangers over the phone, that I was called in on days when they only needed two people to get one survey completed. During the week that I’d been laid off, I collected ninety dollars in unemployment.

But I decided that this job was such a dehumanizing ordeal – I could literally feel chunks of my soul fall off as I entered work every day - that I would rather live on ninety dollars a week and quit eating. Now, whenever an employee became unproductive, instead of firing them, the powers-that-be would simply tell them there was not enough work for them and to call in the next week to see if they were on the schedule. The employee would call and call until they got the hint and moved on to a more respectable line of work, like selling crack at a schoolyard.

The problem was that I’d spent a year proving myself to be a model employee, and no matter how badly I tanked the surveys, being rude to the people I talked to, “accidentally” cutting the call off mid-question, or dialing so slowly that one day I average five calls an hour, they would not let me go. Their thinking honestly was that if they were paying out unemployment for someone not be at work, they might as well force them to come in and not work at the office. And if I quit, I forfeited an unemployment claim.

It didn’t help that my supervisor had caught on to my little game pretty quickly – he wasn’t a stupid person, just a bad one. Every day before the lunch break, we had our ritual where he would pull me aside and ask me why I was suddenly unproductive, and then warn me that I was on probation. This lasted a month.

That’s when I fell into a black pit of despair. That’s when I wondered if I was doomed to be a market researcher for the rest of my life, like Dominic, the sixty-something man who’d snapped at some point and decided that he was on the verge of making it in show business, who always had screenplays that he was sending off to some executive at Fox that he claimed to know. Who claimed to be Luke Perry’s estranged father, and carried pictures of him in his wallet. Who lived in an SRO and who I had to lend a quarter to once so that he couldafford his dinner of coffee and a fifty cent package of cookies.

Or Clinton, who semi-openly drank airplane-sized bottles of rum at his desk. Every afternoon. Or any of my other coworkers whose worlds had shrunk to the point where all they had was their homes, their monthly benefits, their lousy dead end job that was killing them as sure as if it was cancer of the will. I would caffeinate every morning out of sheer boredom. Two cups of coffee before leaving the house. Another large coffee from the deli around the corner on my way in. Two twenty ounce bottles of soda at my desk, all before lunch, just so I could feel a sensation other than sheer, soul-crushing boredom. Nights I would drink heavily, at one point so heavily that instead of spare change I gave a homeless guy my house keys. I half-hoped that at the least, I could give him a place to bathe other than the NY Public Library.

Somewhere in that mess, though, I found the will to work hard at comedy again. I came to the realization that my current plan, hoping someone would recognize my innate genius and give me lots of money, was not working. I started writing jokes at work while I was dialing, while I was talking on the phone. And when I was offered a chance to audition for a silly pop culture show on basic cable, I jumped on it, prepared my ass off the night before, and aced it.

The day I went in to quit my job was one of the sweetest days of my life. My boss, a horrid woman nicknamed The Dragon Lady by her employees because of her breath, was incensed that I was quitting without giving her two weeks notice. And so, she fired me.

* * * * *

Speaking of crazy long, here's the Bill Hicks Sane Man special, uploaded in its entirety onto YouTube in several parts. I'd never really sat down and watched Hicks before this, and I can honestly say I was glad I did, even if I didn't dig all of his stuff. Hopefully, you will:

Part I:



Part II:



Part III:



Part IV:



Part V:



Part VI:



Part VII:



Part VIII:



Part IX:

I try not to hit on women. I'm very shy, and it's hard for me to strike up a conversation with someone I don't know under the best of circumstances, and it never, ever goes well. For example:

When I walk, I have a tendency to sing. I've been told that it looks like I'm talking to myself: "Hey Liam, saw you on Park Ave. talking to yourself. I would've said 'Hi" but it looked like you were in a pretty deep argument, and I didn't want to interrupt."

So, I'm walking down the street, singing, and I see a woman, and she's walking down the street singing, too. And I figure, what the hell, you don't meet a fellow street-singer every day. Nothing from nothing is nothing, so I walked up to her and said, "Hey, what you doing?"

And she said, "I'm walking." And I said, "I'm walking, too. Let's walk together."

And she said, "Shut up, Mary."

And I said, "Who are you talking to?"

And she said, "Mary." And she pointed to - nothing. Thin air.

And I reached around her to feel where Mary was; thin air. I didn't feel nothing.

And she said, "I'm so pissed at Mary." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "Because she didn't take her medication today."

And I said, "What does she take medication for?"

And she said: "Mary's a schizophrenic."

And I said, "Well, it looks like you and Mary got a lot to talk about, so I'm going to let you go."

Here's where it got awkward: we both then turned the corner in the same direction at the same time, and ended up walking three very long blocks together; me, and her arguing with her friend Mary. And the worst part was, the more I heard, the more I felt sorry for Mary. I mean, sure, Mary might have been so crazy that she needed medication, but this woman was being just plain tearing her a new one.

It got to the point where I wanted to pull Mary aside and say, "Look, I don't know what's going on here, but I think you need to find you some new friends. I mean, this lady is nuts."

* * * * *

Speaking of things that are crazy, here's a video by a band called Gil Mantera's Party Dream. I'm not a huge fan of the song, but the video is pretty great; a recreation of cheesy early '80s cheap-o videos:



And here's a clip of the band performing live. It's kinda not safe for work, as it features two grown men in their underwear, one of them sticking a bottle down the back of his draws. Crazy:

back in Queens. He looked exactly the way you would expect a guy who calls himself "Fat Paul" to look.

He was one of these guys who was always afraid that gay guys were conspiring to turn him gay somehow. He would say, "Oh, I could never hang out with fuckin' homos, I don't want them turning me into one."

And I would say, "Your name is 'Fat Paul'. That's how you introduce yourself. These guys are gay, not blind. And you can't 'catch' gay. No one's going to spill gay all over you - unless that's what you want."

And he'd say, "Ah, shaddup, dese fags, they got their tricks."

Anyway, Paul lives with a man now, and they're adopting a baby.

* * * * *

Come see me read a story at the WYSIWYG blog reading show tonight! Click here for the info!

In fact, I get to bring a free guest, so if you want to come but can't pay, e-mail me by four o'clock today.

* * * * *

Speaking of people doing things that would seem amazingly out of character, for some reason Bob Dylan turned up on Dharma & Greg, and of course someone put it up on YouTube. I love everyone and everything in comedy, so I have absolutely no opinion on the mediocre travesty that is Dharma & Greg, but i will say that the only genuinely funny and charming moment I've ever seen in the show's history comes at the end of the second clip, when Dylan reacts to Jenna Elfman's "van" improv. Worth it:

Part I:



Part II:

Some jokes at varied stages of readiness for varied stages:
I've never dated an Asian woman. Not because I'm racist, but because I'm a dork with glasses, and an Asian girlfriend is the red sports car of the dorky Jewish guy world. You see him with one and you just think, "Man, what are you compensating for?"

* * * * *

9:00 am, weekday morning, Starbucks, waiting in line for the bathroom. Two ladies went in ahead of me to the bathroom together, and there's nothing too odd about that.

But then, a mintue later, I heard a snorting noise. And I thought, "No way - could they be - ?" And sure enough, they came out a few minutes later looking coked-up.

How out of control is your life that you're doing coke at nine in the morning at Starbucks?

*SNOORT* "Now I'm ready to face a day of teaching kindrgarten."
*SNOOORT* "My doctor made me switch to decaf. I need a pick-me-up."
*SNOOORT* "My AA sponsor was wrong. Giving up drinking is way easy."

Don't get me wrong; there's days when I need more than one cup of coffee to get going.
But take a Power Bar and relax, dude.

* * * * *

Funerals are such a mixed message.
You get dirty looks if you ask where the buffet is.
You get dirty looks if you take your own sandwich out of your pocket and eat it.
It's almost like they don't want you eating there.

* * * * *

Speaking of quick hits, here's two brief-yet-satisfying videos.

The first involves a kid getting a little too close to a traditional native dance. I seriousy had to watch this ten times, because once was not enough:



And here's a teen girl a little too excited to start exercising:

Before telling my latest story of dealing with a random lunatic in Starbucks, please allow me to address some questions I've gotten lately:

I've gotten a few readers of this blog asking me questions like, "Liam, these stories you tell are bullshit, right? Like the one about the woman banning all male temps from her office because of you, or the lady asking if she could use your power cord and giving you sass for refusing. I mean, now, you didn't really horribly cut your face because you decided to shave before a job interview in a stall in the Men's Room of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, right? And even if you did, you didn't really show up for the interview an hour late, shirt smudged with shaving cream and still bleeding from a gouge on your chin? Please tell me that you're at least exaggerating."

And the answer is, any story you read in this blog about my dealing with random New York City lunatics are guaranteed 100% true. I am what is known as a "wacko magnet."

They seek me out, they stand way too close on the subway when there's plenty of room all around.

They come to my gigs instinctively, without ever knowing why; if you're in the audience at a comedy show and you see a shabby guy who looks like he may have gone a day without showering, maybe laughing a second behind everyone else because all of the jokes have to be screened through his crazy filter, then you can be sure of three things:
1) I am on that show. Even if I haven't been booked for the show I will end up onstage, at which point
2) He WILL start talking to me during my act, and there's a very good chance that
3) He will probably try to join me onstage.

Trust me. I'm like the Moses of those guys. And don't get me wrong - I'm not going to turn my nose up at any kind of loyal following. But if I have to be a favorite of an urban subculture, why not the gays? At least they have money and contacts in the entertainment industry.

* * * * *

When you're not, in the strictest sense,"full-time employed" and you spend your days in Starbucks writing, you get to meet all the other people in this city who don't necessarily have anywhere to go all day.

Claudia and I were meeting at my second-favorite Starbucks in the city to write in. It has some drawbacks; the staff only seems to like one CD in the official Starbucks catalogue, and it's The Best of Bob Marley. I have in the past month heard Three Little Birds more than I've heard my own act.

Seriously, I used to be a fan of Marley, but now all I can do is fantasize about shooting the sheriff and his goddamn deputy - in the head just to make sure they don't ever come back. And although I am generally in favor of the idea of personal liberty, if I hear one more plea for people to get up, stand up for their rights, I will personally put them in shackles and buy us both one-way tickets to Guantanemo Bay so that I can be sure that they have 100% given up the fight.

This Starbucks is near several acting schools and rehearsal studios, so there's always lots of would-be actresses who are too young and pretty to have given up on their dreams hanging out, which is nice. The best part is, they're way too self-absorbed to notice the fact that I'm generally gawping like a goldfish at the side of a glass bowl.

It's also near Times Square, which means you get a lot of tourists; I've actually had to give a confused British woman this direction: "You can't miss 42nd Street, it's the big one with the lights. When you hit it, turn right, you can't miss the theatre. It has a big yellow sign that reads, 'The Lion King'."

It's also conveniently close to the Port Authority, which means that the city's transient lunatic population finds their way through. Anyway, being as how I was sitting that day drinking coffee and water for hours on end, I decided to visit the bathroom that scores of the city's homeless and bike messengers (often one and the same) call "home."

Now, to set the scene: A woman has just walked into the bathroom. I am waiting in line behind a young man who probably was pursuing a career in musical theatre because he's not ready to deal with the fact that his uncle touched him as a little boy. Up to the bathroom line comes a large man.

He's probably in his fifties, bald, his face sliding away with whatever remained of his sanity. He's easily 6'10 (I'm 6', and his height intimidated the shit out of me), and he has a large belly. But it's a solid fat, like one of those old-school barmen who one minute is polishing a glass and the next minute is lifting a plug-ugly over his head and tossing him through a solid oak door.

And he's not just big, but he's clearly nuts. See, at least a big guy, you can handle because generally you make sure you're smiling, you don't step on his shoes, and you think carefully before you say something smart. But crazy people, you're never quite sure what's going to make them snap, and you can just hope that when they do you're five feet away, enjoying the spectacle.

The Big Guy walks up to the bathroom door and rattles the handle, pounds on the door. Then he turns to me and says, "How long have they been in there?"

I said, "Oh, a minute."

He paces to what should be his place on line, then walks up to the bathroom door and pounds on it again. The Drama Queen in line in front of me, says, "It's just been a minute."

Big Guy walks back to his place on line and says in that way that's to no on in particular and yet at the same time to me and the other guy in line, "I don't give a shit. I'll piss right here on the floor. I'm dying of brain cancer, I'll be dead in two months anyway."

Then he walks up to the bathroom door and pounds on it again. I'm sure helping the woman inside go that much faster. He goes back to his place on line, and pauses for a second. But it's that crazy person pause, the kind that's much louder than a scream because you're trying to figure out his thought process, because you know something else is coming next, and you're making sure you don't have to jump out of the way.

Then Big Guy said again, "I don't give a shit, I'll piss right here. You think I won't?" And he unzips his fly.

Now, maybe this is the point in the conversation where there is no appropriate reply, other than keeping your mouth shut. But I couldn't help myself. There was an awkward silence, and I felt compelled to fill it, the way some men see a mountain and feel a primal urge to climb it.

So I said, "Just piss over there," pointing in the other direction, "I don't want you pissing on my shoes."

And he looks me up and down, making sure to scrutinize my shoes. And then he says, "I'd like to piss on you."
Pause.
"But I can't."

And then he grabbed my hand and shook it, and I shook it back just as hard, and we were in a handshake stalemate for a few seconds before he let go.

There was peace and quiet for exactly one second, which was then broken by an old man with a cane, thick glasses, and a dirty raincoat, running up to the bathroom door. The Big Guy grabbed the Dirty Old Man and said, "Hey, there's a line."

The Old Man broke loose from the Giant's grip and started yelling, "My heart medicine! My heart medicine!"

Big Guy replied, "Your medicine's not in there." He put his arm across the frantic Old Man's chest and dragged him back, as he screamed about his heart medicine. Then Big Guy announced, "He tried that back at Burger King fifteen minutes ago."

And that's when I decided that I could wait to use the bathroom at a hotel a couple of blocks away.

* * * * *

And speaking of the bizarre, here's a Japanese video with three aerobicizing young women teaching the viewer how to speak English while being robbed at knifepoint in an American tundra by two chartered accountants. It's made the rounds of the Internet, but if you haven't seen it, well, you're welcome:

Do you remember the magic? the first time you entered the tiny basement room at the Lolita Bar, and thought, "Man, I'm finally home"? Then you thought, "I wish they'd turn on the air conditioner?"

Well, Tell Your Friends returns this Monday, with a truly exciting lineup - the head writer for The Onion, and much more. Check it out:

MONDAY, SEPT. 18, 2006
Tell Your Friends! returns
at the Lolita Bar
226 Broome St., corner of Allen
8:00pm - FREE

HOST: BARON VAUGHN

WITH:
TODD HANSON
is head writer for The Onion

MIKE O'CONNELL
has been seen on "Jimmy Kimmell Live," at the Aspen Comedy Festival, and was Rolling Stone magazine's Hot Comic for 2005.

LIAM McENEANEY
from Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," VH1's "Best Week Ever," and was a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"

AMANDA MELSON
has been a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"

And our house band A Brief View of the Hudson!

* * * * *

This first is my Premium Blend set from five years ago.
You may have noticed that David Allen Grier gives me an extremely sarcastic intro, with lots of audience laughter. here's the reason:

My last name is hard to pronounce, which is something I came to terms with long before I ever started standup. And I never mind when an MC has trouble pronouncing it, because my attitude is that I could have given myself an easy stage name, like "Liam Mac," and the fact that I didn't is nobody's fault but my own.

In order ot make it easier for DAG (as we call him in The Biz) to introduce me, the good folks at Comedy Central spelled my name phonetically in the TelePrompTer: Liam "Mac-Uh-Knee-Knee."

You guessed it; he pronounced it "Liam Macuh-Can-ee-Can-ee." I went out and did my set, and when I got backstage, everyone was laughing. As it turned out, Grier was having to do the intro again after I got offstage. In fact, he had to redo it three more times.

The fact that he was getting increasingly pissed, coupled with the truly backhanded wording of the intro ("The topics of this next young comic may seem familiar" - what the fuck does that mean? That I'm a hack? Unfortunately, it was my very first TV spot and I felt lucky to even be on the show, so I didn't have them change it), combine to make it sound like DAG has something personal against me.

By the way, I met DAG at the Premium Blend afterparty, and he was nice. I was so excited to meet him - he was one of my favorite In Living Color castmates, and he was Don "No Soul" Simmons in Amazon Women on the Moon. When I brought that up like a true comedy nerd, he told me that he was in the audition for that up against OJ Simpson.

That being said, enjoy my Premium Blend:



* * * * *

And here's my Best Week Ever reel, which is the skinniest I've ever been on camera:



* * * * *

And here's a set I did last year at NYC's Laugh Lounge:

For the benefit of new readers, one reason I keep this blog is as an incentive to keep writing new jokes. Below are some selections from my notebook of varying degrees of potential to be a good bit.

I have an evil twin.

And the worst part is, I'm pretty sure he's my mom's favorite.

I'm just so sick of hearing, "Liam, why can't you be more like your brother? He just built a death ray laser for the government."

"Mom, it's for the government to hold them hostage. He's demanding ten million dollars or he'll blow up Indiana."

"Oh really mr. Smarty-pants? And when do you plan to make ten million dollars?"

* * * * *

If you look at me, and you think, "There's a guy who visits Star Trek message boards," you'd be dead wrong.

First of all, they're Star Wars message boards.

Actually, that isn't even true. I'm pretty immune to Star Wars culture. And believe me, I tried, because that's what my nerdly instincts told me I should do. But to be honest, I really can't judge Star Wars without judging Star Wars fans.

Star Wars fans are - odd. They go past regular nerdiness. Like, nerdiness is kind of cool right now, but Star Wars fans are beyond that. Star Wars fans are the kids in high school who made the Chess Team roll their eyes and say, "Oh come on guys."

They are insane. I tried reading a Star Wars fan message board once, and it read like the minutes from a Manson Family Group Therapy session.

Mmm, I like where this is going, but I think I'm going to revisit this in a week or so, mayeb write a few better jokes around the premise.

* * * * *

When it comes to women, I don't really have a physical "type."

In fact, if you put all the women I've dated in a room together, you'd be surprised at how much time they spend consoling each other.

It would be something like a support group - "Hi, my name is Gretchen, and I make poor life choices."
"HI GRETCHEN!!"

* * * * *

I recently saw a four hundred pound woman in a wheelchair, and I felt really sorry for her.

Because you know she doesn't get treated as well as other handicapped people, because in the back of most folks' minds they're wondering if she really has a disability, or if she's just lazy.

* * * * *

Believe me, I'm not making fun. I need to lose some weight. The worst was when I had a job sitting behind a desk, and I gained abotu twenty pounds. And I felt like explaining to people, "No, it isn't me. I'm in much better shape, it's just this job that makes me look fat."

* * * * *

Speaking of loosely disjointed rambling, the great Orson Welles ended his career as the spokesman for cheap wine and frozen peas. Below, a couple of outtakes from a commercial shoot where he is blind stinking drunk. As yo uwatch, you really have to wonder what was going through the minds of the other actors.

Another Starbucks story. I was in my favorite Starbucks to write in last week, doing some work on my ol' MacBook. A woman sitting near me, a yuppie lady who lives in a neighborhood I can barely afford to eat in sometimes, was working on something on her trusty ol' MacBook, while her boyfriend sat across from her writing.

She, I suspects, is a Lady Who Blogs. A Lady who wants to live the Sex and the City "creative" lifestyle, while sexually empowering her womanhood, which means that she writes journal entries about the banal lives of her and her friends and their not-as-interesting-as-they-think sex lives. And yet, she doesn't understand that just because - forgive my crudeness here - she has a twat between her legs doesn't mean that she has to act like one.

Anyway, she sighed loudly (when I write, I spend a lot of time watching people do stuff. Especially young attractive women), then gave me a scrutinizing look that not only said, "I'm going to annoy you," but practically announced it with a fanfare of trumpets and shouting courtiers. Sure enough, after muttering something to her boyfriend, she stood and she approaches me and she said, "Excuse me, but I couldn't help noticing that we have the same computer. I left my power cord at home. Is there any chance I oculd borrow yours for a few minutes?"

And I thought about it for a second, thought about someone needing to use my power cord for "just a few minutes" when it takes hours to charge a laptop battery, not to mention whether or not it was a good idea, just giving away an important piece of my computer to a complete stranger. And so I said, "No."

And then she said, "But your light (meaning the battery light - Ed.) is green, which means it's charged."

And so I said, "I'm sorry, but no."

And she said, "Why not?'

Honestly, I've lived in this city my entire life, and I've experienced the full array of pushy, ballsy behavior, but in the two words "Why Not," she managed to pack more pure unadulterated obnoxiousness into that ninety second exchange than I'd experienced in the previous month.

Then she managed to put her shawl over her shoulders and head off to her apartment and get her power cord (which took her five minutes, by the by - Ed.).

Cut To:
same Starbucks, maybe a half-hour (or as some would call it, "a few minutes") later, and she's working on her laptop. Next to it, on her table, is a pen. I watch as a black gentleman sitting nearby, drinking a coffee, goes through his pockets looking for something. He stood up, seeing her pen, and approached her and asked if he could borrow it. She looked at him disdainfully and replied, "No."

That's when I made sure to make eye contact with her and ask, "Why not?"

If looks could kill, my head would have ignited in the kind of white hot flame that melts steel. But to her credit, she did not then recant and offer the guy her pen. If you're going to be an a-hole, you might as well stick to your guns and be a complete a-hole.

Edited to add: As it happens, I didn't lend the guy a pen, I didn't even think to, because I was too busy gloating over how awful that woman was. I guess I'm not the world's best person either. C'est la vie!

* * * * *

Speaking of mind-lowing experiences that transcend reality, here's Tom Snyder interviewing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey and Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia on the old "Tomorrow show.

I strongly disapprove of these SUVs that have DVD players with TV screens in the back. They have these screens to keep kids occupied on long trips.

When I was a kid, my sister and I had a great way to entertain ourselves on family vacations; we'd play a game called, "Let's Make Dad Nuts."

In fact, our game even had a little theme song. It went, "DAAA-AD, I'm HUNgry!"

And then he'd say, "We'll eat at six."

And then you'd sing, "I'm HUN-gry NOW!"

And he would start breathing heavily, and you could see little smoke rings coming out of his nose, and his brow would would come all the way down his nose, so that his forehead was actually right above his upper lip.

And he'd say the one thing fathers throughout history always say: "If you keep this up, I'm going to turn this car around and take us home."

"But we're in Arizona."

"I don't care." And then he'd make some cryptic remark like, "Do you remember when you had two older sisters?"

"No."

"Well, that's because she wouldnt stop whinign about being hungry. We left her at the zoo."

-----------------

I could tell my parents were mad at me one trip, because we stopped at one of those roadside alligator farms in Florida, and they told me it was a petting zoo.

* * * * *

Speaking of strife, if you're a long-time listener of the Howard Stern radio show, you'll recognize this clip of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch flipping out on her crew:

Then please skip my blog entry today, and instead check out my friend Paul Sullivan's baseball blog.

Paul is a filmmaker, producer, and die-hard Red Sox fan who has been on a couple of HBO documentaries about the so-called Babe Ruth curse ..

All of Paul's friends have been begging him to write a blog about baseball, because he is passionate, articulate, and quite funny, as well as being prone to filling our inboxes with massively long baseball e-mails.

I was watching Meet the Press Sunday morning, and Tim Russert was interviewing Dick Cheney, and to give Russert full credit, he was not letting Cheney slide. In fact, Russert might be the only person in the press who I've seen interview Bush and Cheney and not give them softballs or easy questions. And I think that the reason he can get away with it is that the core constituency that Bush and Cheney should be afraid to alienate are not spending their Sunday mornings watching Meet the Press.

I have to say that watching Cheney cemented exactly the thing I admire most about him. I'd tried to figure it out for years, and it became crystal clear: He is not afraid to be what he is; an openly evil puppetmaster pulling the strings. I used to watch Disney cartoons, wondering why no one suspected the main villain was up to no good, what with their wearing dark capes, laughing maniacally at the slightest provocation, and singing songs about how much better life would be once the hero was dead and the world was under their thumb.

In fact, if I was going to make a movie about a bent, twisted villain super-genius bent on world conquest, I would cast Cheney in a heartbeat. You know, like the kind of man who shoots his friend in the face and gets the victim to issue a public apology for embarrassing him. The kind of man who could watch the biggest terrorist attack on US soil in history, and immediately start the wheels spinning, figuring how to turn that into an excuse to attack Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it.

And the fact that he makes no bones about who he is is the masterstroke. If he had any kind of positive charisma, he would be the most dangerous man in America, if not the world. Instead, he's a cantankerous, contemptuous cesspit of sarcasm and bilious spittle who can go on a show like Meet the Press and be confronted with his lies, and not only show no remorse, but lie about the fact that he had lied, denying it with the fervor of a six year-old, with his hand in the cookie jar, denying that he was trying to eat a cookie.

At one point, Russert showed videotape of Cheney lying which Cheney had just lied about not having done, and Cheney immediately started adding a third lie to the mix about how the first two lies were invalid.

Cheney's at the point where I would immediately suspect him, even if he said something I wholeheartedly agreed with. If Dick Cheney went on national television and said, "The President and I are firmly against baby-eating," my first thought would be, "What's he hiding on the baby-eating issue? Do babies really taste like chocolate? Are they an alternative energy source?"

Sorry, I really try to keep politics off of this blog, but I've been surprised at how depressed I've been this whole weekend leading up to the fifth anniversary of September 11th, and to see this smug arrogant piece of left-over Nixon White House garbage telling me that his underlings hadn't spent a lot of time linking Saddam hussein to the falling of the World Trade Center makes me as sick as their use of the September 11th tragedy as political currency in the first place.

It's like the murderer who uses his lousy childhood as an excuse for his crimes. Ugh. Sometimes I expect Cheney to turn into a bat and scream, "SO LONG FOOLS! NOW I SHALL FEED ON THE BLOOD OF VIRGINS!" as he flaps off into the sunrise.

My point is, if you disagree with me, good. Please persuade me that I live in a world where the Bush administration's actions over the last five years are rational, well-reasoned, and ethical. That thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis didn't die in vain. That global warming is a myth, that the economy is rebounding, that the evidence of my senses are completely wrong.

In other words, I need to get laid. Okay, I get it.

* * * * *

Speaking of me taking my opinions way too seriously, this is something that made me laugh long after I finished watching it. The man's name is "eXtreme Elvis." And unlike, say, "Extreme" sodas or flavour snack chips, he is as "eXtreme" as his name implies. In fact, this video is very much not safe for work, as it contains foul language, and nudity. Please enjoy as eXtreme Elvis sings Hound Dog. I defy you to stop watching it once you start:

Earlier this summer, Pedro Martinez, ace pitcher for the New York Mets, returned to pitch at Boston's famous Fenway Park against his old team, the Boston Red Sox.

The game was highly-anticipated, a real old-fashioned duel between Pedro and Josh beckett, the two teams' best players pitted against each other. As it turned out, Pedro had been hiding an injury to his hip, was shelled early and often and was yanked by the fourth inning.

However, I had bought tickets on ebay because I wanted to be there; I'd never been to Fenway Park, although it had been a fiture of my youth, being host to the 1986 World Series. I knew all about the famous Green monster, and Yawkey Way.

I took my friend Rachael, as she had the two ideal attributes for a boon travel companion;
1) with no steady job, she was able to take a Wednesday and travel to a different city, and
2) she owns a car.

Oh yeah and
3) She's a cool person I can hang out with.

Here, then, are some selected lithographs from My Big Trip To Fenway Park:

Boston from the Charles River
Awww, it's almost like a real city!



No, that's not a model railroad building. It's Boston!



* * * * *

Here I am at Harvard.
See, mama? I told you I'd make it some day. (Not shown, security carding me on the way in to make sure my IQ was above 130.)



* * * * *

And here's Rachael at Harvard, too.
Boy, they'll take anyone, huh?



* * * * *

Rachael whispers a secret to a Harvard building.
"Pssst! Don't tell anyone, but I went to Emerson! No it's not a community college!



* * * * *

Me in front of Harvard Square on the way out.
What did they mean, "And don't come back"?



* * * * *

Me and some Jesus guy on the way to Fenway.
He got really excited that I was from New York, and asked if I knew the pastor of the Times Square Church, as he receives literature from the guy in the mail.
No, but does knowing the Pope of Greenwich Village count?



* * * * *

Here I am, in front of the Green Monster:
Somewhere inside, ten year-old Liam was dying of happiness.



* * * * *

Me in front of the Fenway field.
About to drop twenty-five bucks on an "A-Fraud" t-shirt. No, not really.



* * * * *

The view from our seats.
Not pictured: Drunk Red Sox fan telling me that the Mets are finally facing a real major league team. I'd love to find that guy now.



* * * * *

Pedro heads to the bullpen, as the crowd gives him a standing O.
Who would've guessed that that would be the highlight of the game?



* * * * *

We sat next to a crazy woman who wouldn't shut up.
Especially about how Pedro has the best ass in baseball, and how much she missed looking at it. So Rachael took a picture of Pedro's ass, and, well, I guess it's a-ight. He's no "Oil Can" Boyd, though (so named for how slick his "can" was).



* * * * *

Some random Red Sox fans.
Not so smug now, are you, fuckers?



* * * * *

The Fenway grounds crew does not do the YMCA.
Which is odd, considering that Boston seems to have a Y about every three blocks.



* * * * *

A Red Sox bunts.
And I capture the thrilling action.



* * * * *

The next day, we drove home through Connecticut and followed a series of signs off the highway to the Nathaniel Hale Homestead.
It was a lovely piece of property.



* * * * *

We also found a waterfall run privately by a dentist on his own property. He was very serious about keeping people away from his waterfall.
Please note that the other side of this sign, it don't say nothin', That side was made for you and me.







What a perfect end to a lovely trip. The End.
Although, if I do return, it's nice to know that the K Klub will welcome me back:



* * * * *

Speaking of happiness, here's the Foundations performing Build Me Up Buttercup, one of the purest expressions of musical joy. I defy you not to smile and tap your toes to this one:



And why not a little anger? A little Bob Dylan performing Isis:



And here's The Dirtbombs performing their GREAT song, Underdog. This version is not as awesome as on the abum, but definitely well worth a listen.



And finally, when it looked like the BBC was going to cancel low-budget sci-fi classic Doctor Who, a fan put together an (endless) all-"star" We Are The World-style video to save. Seriously, the only "celebrity" I recognize in this video is Colin Baker, the star of the show he was trying to save. It's awful, so enjoy. Well, I say enjoy...



Doctor Who ended up getting cancelled, so good work guys.

Last week, I was tired and hungry and on my way from one show to another. I walked past a restaurant that had two gyro spits (chicken and lamb) behind a counter in the window. It was clean and well-lit, with mirrors, and a bustling clientele. I walked in and ordered a gyro sandwich. There was a Muslim from uptown lecturing a table of Middle Eastern college kids on the upcoming Ramadan, with a collection box, talking about how he knows Mike Tyson personally.

The gyro was delicious, and filling, made with really good, fresh-baked pita bread and crisp, tasty lamb meat. I made a mental note of the location of the restaurant as I walked away.

Tuesday, I was in the neighborhood, on my way to a show, and was in the mood for a gyro. I walked up to where I thought the restaurant was, and there was a cheap, dingy Indian restaurant, with cheap furniture. At first, I assumed that I'd misremembered the gyro place's location, so I walked to the next block - it wasn't there either. So I walked back to the Indian restaurant, and that's when I noticed the two long-disused gyro spits in the window behind the counter where I remembered them. In fact, other than the fact that it looked as if the restaurant had been replaced with a cheaper version that hadn't had a good scrubbing-out in a long time, and the fact that there was now a big TV way in the back playing an angry Indian newscast, it had the exact same layout as the restaurant I'd been in before.

Well, I figured that if I was meant to eat there, I was meant to eat there, and I have to say I had one of the tastiest Chicken Tikka Masala dishes I've ever had, for probably the least money you can be charged at a restaurant while still being guaranteed of eating actual food.

I walked all through the area where I remembered the gyro restaurant tonight, but I couldn't find hide nor hair of it. Then I figured it may have been a block over, and I was too tired to remember it correctly. So I walked a block over and looked for it, but couldn't find it.

There are several theories to explain this:

1. I got totally confused about the location of this gyro place. This is known as the Liam Is A Dumbass Theory, and is a popular one among McEneanists.

2. I am completely insane, and am having auditory, visual, as well as taste-ory hallucinations. This is known as the Liam Needs To Be Locked Away Theory, and the one I fear most.

3. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. This is known as the Liam Hopes He's Quoting Shakespeare Correctly Because It's Bad Enough Looking Like A Nutcase Without looking Like A Dumbass Too Theory.

4. I have really weird karma from writing jokes like the following:
I'm going to adopt a severely handicapped child.
Not because I'm a terribly good person, but because I really want to meet Derek Jeter.

* * * * *

UPDATED TO ADD: Okay, I feel like an ass. I found the gyro place today, three blocks from the Indian place. Which means that not only did I walk past it twice in two days looking for it, I walked past a place with a huge neon sign above it proclaiming exactly what it was. So, not sppoky, just theory number one was absolutely correct, so whoever bet on Theory 1 call your bookie and collect.

Although, it turns out there was an eangry leprechaun who greeted me at the entrance and - you know what? I feel like a huge douche. THIS IS THE WORST DAY IN THE HISTORY OF MY BLOG!

Just watch Woody Allen, okay? I - I need to be alone right now.

* * * * *

Speaking of bad weirdness, here's Woody Allen interviewing Bill Graham on his second TV sketch special (somewhere, there's extant footage of his first special, where he debated William F. Buckley, Jr.):

PART I



PART II

If ths comedy thing doesn't start panning out for BIG CASH PRIZES, I may have to temp for a while.

I've only ever temped one time in my life, and that was a few years ago filling in for my friend Peggy. Peggy has a real job, a good job with things I can only dream of, like job security and job security, and a regular paycheck. The kind of job you hold onto with both hands and don't let go, if you're any kind of sane person. And she graciously allowed me to fill in behind her desk for two days while she went out of town to plan her wedding.

Now, the thing to remember about being a temp is that you're supposed to be a warm body in an empty chair. Unless you're looking to go permanent at a job, temping is about keeping your head down, answering some phone calls, getting your time card signed, and getting out of there with your dignity attached. It's like whoring; never get attached, never let them kiss you on the lips, and never fall in love. This is the way temping's been described to me, and I have to say that I like it.

No offense to people who enjoy working in an office. That's fine. But for me, if I want to be friends with Ted the jacksass from accounting, there's plenty of Bennigans and TGIFs in this city with a happy hour and a waitstaff used to shutting down emotionally.

So I temped for my friend Peggy for two days, and I'm going to say that I'm a pretty honest guy. I would tell youse guys the truth if I had done something outrageously awful or uncalled-for. Like photocopied my scrotum and hung it up with the words "JUST HANG IN THERE" scrawled under it. In fact, I can say with in all truth that, as far as I know, I just kept my head down and wrote my blog on the DL for two days.

The upshot is, when Peggy got back into the office, her boss told her that from now on, because of me, they were not going to hire any more male temps. Ever.

That's right; I was so bad at temping, fifty percent of the human race was forbidden to do it at that office again.

I was so bad at doing busy work and getting people to forget that I was sitting there, that I ruined it for an entire gender.

I mean, think about it for a second. We're not talking about Peggy returning and her boss saying, "From now on, no more of your friends temping here," or even, "We're going to save some money on temps and we're going to put a potted plant behind your desk until you get back."

No. I was so bad at doing nothing that her boss, a woman I might add, overturned decades of advancements in women's rights dating back to the suffreagette movement and said, in effect, "Despite what I would like, in my heart of hearts, to believe, women are just nherently better-suited to temp work, and I will not have another man in this office attempting it."

I guess my point is, can anyone recommend a good temp agency?

* * * * *

Speaking of guys who are not everybody's cup of tea. I guess that at some point, Frank Zappa was a guset on the Monkees. Frank Zappa, dressed as Mike Nesmith, interviews Mike Nesmith, dressed up as Frank Zappa.



And here's a very young Frank Zappa playing the bicycle on the old Steve Allen Show:



And here's John Lennon and Yoko Ono performing with Zappa and the Mothers on Scumbag:

Me, I celebrated Child Labor Day.
I bought a pair of Nikes.

* * * * *

I don't do well on job interviews. They always ask dumb questions that no one ever answers honestly.

Like, "What would you consider your biggest accomplishment at your last job?"
"My biggest accomplishment? Well, one morning, I drank so much coffee that I could see through walls."

Or, "Well, I really hated my job, so I stayed out drinking one night, and I was out so late that I got home just in time to wake up for work the next day. Well, I had to save all my sick days for this vacation I was planning on taking, so I came into work still drunk. I fell asleep on the toilet for three hours and no one noticed. That was a pretty big accomplishment."

Another dumb question: "What would you consider your biggest strength?"
"I can jerk off without using my hands. . . . I am showing you. I'm showing you right now."

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"
"In a crystal ball. That's where I always see the future."

"What do you bring to the company?"
"I'm a team player. I have a fantasy baseball team, a fantasy football team."

"What's your biggest weakness?"
"I do have a weakness for alcohol. I have a 'lateness problem,' so I'll show up around noon every day - really drunk. Fall asleep on the toilet for three hours, but don't worry no one will notice. Also, I cut myself to see if I can still feel. Then, I'm going to sell your computer for crack."

* * * * *

Speaking of people not suited for the working world, here's Steve Martin in the title role of his short film, The Absent-Minded Waiter:

Happy Labor day, everyone, where we celebrate the industry of the great American work force by - taking the day off and going to the beach.

And what better way to celebrate the American working stiff than by posting a short movie (in three parts) by those two models of the poor blue-collar sap, Laurel and Hardy? Just as W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers made their fortunes portraying characters that tried to get ahead by any means necessary, so long as they weren't honest or involve working, Laurel and Hardy were the quintessential working schmos, blundering idiots who couldn't get ahead no matter how hard they tried.

This is their Academy Award winning short film, The Music Box, the one famous for the guys trying to move a piano up a flight of stairs. It was posted to YoutTube in three parts, so please enjoy:

Part I


Part II


Part III

I almost dropped dead of shock today. I saw a woman. In Manhattan. Disciplining her kid.

Not hitting the kid, but telling him that it's not okay to run around Starbucks and scream like he had just been set on fire.

Normally, I believe in what I call "the three strikes and you're out" rule for watching other people raise their kids - if your child is so obnoxious that I feel the need to strike you in the face three times, then you really need to get you and your monster out.

I've seen little kids in this city tell their parents "No," and tell their parents, "Shut up." I once saw a little kid call his father "Stupid."

Where I grew up in Queens, everyone was too afraid of their parents to pull that shit. And by "their parents," I mean, "their dad." In my neighborhood, everyone was just a little bit afraid of their dad. Not because you knew he'd hit you, but because you didn't know for sure that he wouldn't.

See, some child development experts say a child should never get spanked. But in my neighborhood, all the fathers subscribed to the two-spanking theory - they spanked you the first time so you knew he was serious, and the second time so you knew that the first time wasn't an accident.

And then the kid thinks twice the next time he's ready to misbehave; "Oh man, that guy's just crazy enough to do it."

I mean, the moms were scary too, but mostly because of the threat of, "Wait until your father gets home at six o'clock. Come six-fifteen, you're dead. You'd better get on your knees and pray non-stop that God is ready to forgive you, because by six thirty, you're going to be meeting Him."

Sure mom'd spank you, but moms' spankings never hurt unless she's hitting you with a tree branch, but you cry anyway because you know she's trying her hardest and you don't want her to feel unappreciated.

When I was growing up, everyone always envied the kid whose dad had run out on them, because that left them alone with Mom, and then they got away with murder so long as they didn't mind all the crying.

You'd run into Barry with the single mom, "Hey Barry, where'd you get the ice cream?"
"My new Uncle Tony gave me fifty dollars if I promised not to come home all weekend."

Yes sir, the kids with broken homes had all the luck.

Anyway, my parents deny now that I was spanked as a kid, but I was. I remember the first spanking I ever got. I was five years old, and my parents had a white vinyl couch, big buttons. Nice couch. And when you're young, and you're getting married and thinking about starting a family, you have a choice; you can either have kids, or you can have nice things. But you can't have both. It started life as a white couch, but after two kids, it was a grey-and-yellow couch.

Anyway, I don't know what possessed me one afternoon to take my mom's sewing scissors and slash a huge cut in the arm of this couch and pull the stuffing out. I don't even think I had a good reason. It was like sometimes you'll see in court testimony where some guy says, "I don't know what happened Your Honor, one minute my boss was telling me I wasn't getting a raise, the next minute I'd stuffed him into a microwave and was making him a burrito."

I stabbed the hell out of the arm of the couch, like it owed me a gambling debt, and then I did the same thing to the other arm of the couch, just so it would know I meant business.

And of course, my mom flipped out, and she said, "Oh my God, what happened to my couch?"

And I, even though I was only five years old, was smart enough to know that the situation called for a lie, but was still dumb enough to be really bad at it. So I thought about what the most logical explanation, the one piece of reasoning that would make this an acceptable act. And what my five year-old mind came up with was, "I don't know."

And my mom said, "Then why are you holding those scissors?"

And I - in my five year-old genius for invention - said, "I was defending the couch."

"From who?"

And I thought about who the most logical person to shift the blame to would be, and I said, "Laura did it!"

Laura was my sister. She was - is - three years older than me, and therefore had built up three years track record for mischief. I thought I had an iron-clad alibi. But my mom, the old detective, she poked a hole in my logic: "Laura's not even home right now."

And then she said, ""Go to your room and wait - until your father comes home."

I don't know why being sent to my room was such a punishment. I spent many happy hours alone in my room, but the minute I was sent to my room, I would plot my escape like William Holden in Stalag 17.

And as soon as I'm in my room, I start to hope against hope that this would be the one time my Mom wouldn't turn stoolie. Moms are tricky like that, like Good Cop/Bad Cop where you confess to doing something like stealing a cookie when you knew you couldn't spoil your appetite for dinner and she'd act all reasonable and then Bad Cop would come home and she'd turn state's witness faster than you could say "canary.". And I was a dumb kid, so no matter how many times she failed to not rat you out, I always hoped against hope that this time was different.

And my Dad would come home, and I'd hear the door slam. The door slammed every time my Dad came home, because in the first thirteen years of my life, he only ever had one good day at work.

And I would hear them talking for a good five minutes, in low voices, and I had myself convinced by this time that my mom was saying something like, "Oh honey, look what I did with the arms of the couch, I decided to air out the stuffing so it wouldn't get damp," and then my Dad would say, "Wow, what a great idea. Let's all go out for pizza and ice cream."

Because that was the kind of thing that would happen on the sitcoms I watched. I say I was a dumb kid, but really, I was so dumb that I believed in sitcoms way after I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

And then of course, my Dad came stomping to my door, and I could hear him coming down the apartment hallway - STOMP STOMP STOMP - and the door opened, and he stood there eighteen feet tall, in the doorway, his teeth sharp and his eyes on fire, and a wind blowing as he held a sharp broadsword, and he looked at me and said, "COME OUT HERE."

And he pointed me at the couch and said, "DID YOU DO THAT?"

And I felt a lie coming to my lips, and I looked him in the face and it just shriveled there on my lips, the lie actually looked at the old man in the face, turned to me and said, "You're on your own now, stupid. I ain't coming out here to face that."

So I just nodded and said, "Uh-huh."

And he said, "Why?"

And I said, "I thought you would like it."

And then he pulled me over his lap and spanked me. And that wasn't the worst part - the worst part was he actually said this before he started - first he said, "This is going to hurt me a lot more than it's going to hurt you."
Which I thought was dumb, because the whole point was that this was going to hurt me a lot.

And then he said, "Don't cry, it'll only make things worse."
Which I thought was also dumb, because getting a spanking was the worst thing that could happen.

But I survived. And I certainly never told my dad to shut up or called him stupid.

The moral of this story? I should be allowed to dicipline your kids.

The other moral of this story? If I want to turn this into a joke, I need a good punchline right here. Oh well, I'll try it at Tell Your Friends in a couple weeks.

* * * * *

The Marx Brothers are the best. Here are three of my favorite Marx Bros. scenes:

1. In the movie Monkey Business, they're stowaways on a cruise ship. In order to get off the ship, they've stolen the passport of then-celebrity singer/actor/Frenchman Maurice Chevalier. This is one of my favorite of their scenes - I love the throwaway logic that of course they look like Chevalier, but they gotta sing like him too - and if you ever want to make me laugh, you can just yell, "CHEVALIER??!!!??!"



2. This scene, the mirror scene from the great Duck Soup is sheer brilliance. Long, unimportant story short, Harpo and Chico have dressed like Groucho in order to steal his plans for war between their countries. Harpo locks Groucho in his bathroom, but he escapes. As the scene opens, Harpo, dressed like Groucho, is closing a window, as Groucho descends some stairs...



3. I've often thought that A Night at the Opera was overrated, but this is still an undeniably great scene. Groucho mistakes Chico, the manager of a struggling young opera singer, for the manager of Italy's greatest opera star. Hijinks, naturally, ensue as they negotiate a contract: