Tonight

Ever since my comedy became a commodity I've struggled to be funny. Bad timing, yes, but it's the intense over- thinking of jokes and stories that has killed their humor.  Think processed cheese.  And it's all thanks to radio. Radio seems to demand corniness. You're pushed to 'get into the break' with a real zinger. "And the weather going to be hot, hot, hot! Take some sunscreen and be sure to meet our night guy Crazy Tim at the new Overzealous Cellular store. There's balloons for the kids and free hot dogs for everybody...they're free because at 98 degrees we haven't had to fire up the grill! (hit button and start commercial break..."Join z-93 next Saturday at Bonanza Cellular...." and then throw your headphones.) I was so excited when I got my first real radio gig. I was 21 and ruled the morning airwaves of Farmington, NM. Well, actually, I'd been hired to do the news for K-Frog Country and Big Dog Classic rock but couldn't read murder stories without making off-color jokes. So with that kind of incompetence I was promoted to co-hosting the number one time slot in the region (from Tees Nos Pos to Dove Creek.) Excited and giddy about my quick on-air ascent I went running home to hear what my friends had to say.

"So, do they insist you not be really funny. Like is it some kind of censorship?" asked my one of my hippy friends. Shocked that my wacky naked hitchhiking bit hadn't hit home I offered a weak response of "yah, you know, it's older people listening. They don't like what you like." But it got worse. My then-girlfriend had her family in town. They all listened while on their way to Mesa Verde. Excitedly I drove the hour and some it took me to get across the state line and back home to Durango. There I ran into Sarah's family. I awaited the accolades. After some silence someone mentioned they were hungry.

It was bad. Real bad. Some years later I actually called my boss and apologized. He laughed. The first response of it's kind in some time.

As my radio career wore on more and more people wondered why I was no longer funny. I'd turn on the microphone and try so hard to be hilarious that I'd actually accomplish the opposite. I'd ask listeners, the janitor who might happen to be in the studio, for example, if she thought what I'd just broadcast was funny. "Como?" And then much to my disappointment she explained what she thought funny was not my lesbian-meets-priest joke elaborately intertwined with this weekend's cellular promotion, but that two breaks previous I'd screwed up the weather forecast. So then, with advice assembled from the broken English of a Mexican National, I started to make mistakes on purpose. This, I was sure, was the comic gold I'd been searching for.

I was again wrong. Even my mother offered to join my show. She did. And everywhere I went I heard how great my mother was. I'd spend all day living recklessly so that I could report my mistakes on the air but it was mother's sweet honesty that captivated listeners. In a last ditch effort to be funny, I broadcast my mistake of trying to inspire laughter with mistakes. The irony would knock 'em dead. I finished my self-deprecating diatribe and proudly pounded the 'break button'. With commercials taking over and the mic safely turned off, my mother, who joined the show via phone and always knew the nicest way to say the worse things, gently suggested she come on more than just once a day.

From there I spiraled into a freefall of bad jokes and sordid personal stories. I decided I'd become a Shock Jock and startle the good people of Colorado Springs.  Maybe a bad idea on a "Family Friendly" radio station.  As it was in the Christian Capital of the world where I received this fan mail:

“I am terribly offended that Jared Ewy bashed religion, primarily Christianity, but the consequences he’ll have to handle on his own. For a very, very long time.”

Debbie Mach

“Suggesting that officers spend all their time eating donuts is so disrespectful that I hope he never needs one to respond to his house. Maybe these cops that he is slamming should look into his drug habits.”

Chris Barr
Canon City Police Officer

I hate that John Ewee on the Peak.

Hank Dowell (written in arbitron diary)

I had--or at least I was under the impression--never been despised by anyone in my entire life. I didn't know how to deal with it. But after a few minutes of writhing came up with a plan: Those angry listeners taking the time to call my boss, and his boss and his boss, were more dedicated than those who might be pleased with the show but never bother to comment. So I'd make more people angry.  This way they'd be motivated to provide feedback on my show and all my bosses would be happy to know they were at least listening!

Again, wrong. My latest strategy culminated with the owner of the station bursting into the studio and crying. What drove her to tears? Listen below. She took it personally.

Shortly thereafter I found myself only partially employed at Alice 105-9 in Denver. It was here where the program director told me this: "I've heard you in the Springs. You talk about yourself a lot. I don't care about you. The listener does not care about you. Don't waste our time."

Every Saturday and Sunday from seven to midnight I tried to talk about something other than me, my mistakes and their repercussions. I could not. Sometimes, while wandering around Alice's sophisticated digs of Denver's Tabor Center, I'd completely forget that my presence in the studio was necessary for the next song to play. One time my boss heard Alanis Morisette fade and fade until there was nothing. With no Nickelback or Uncle Kracker to carry on the baton, Alice and all her listeners got to take a breather for a minute or so. I thought it was a nice alternative to Alanis but there seemed to be some debate about that. Representing the dissension would be Tom, my boss, who called and asked if I wanted to have lunch with him. Not knowing he'd heard Alanis' painful cries diminish to peaceful silence, I actually thought he wanted to discuss my being promoted.

I would not be correct. Again.

I won't even elaborate on the KOSI era of my tattered broadcast resume. Despite Cher and Michael Bolton and Whitney Huston propping me up with their encouraging words, I could no longer with any kind of glee promote the next great opportunity to get a killer deal on a cellular phone.

It was all over.  No longer could I lie to listeners.  Turns out you can get a decent price on a cell phone even after we run out of hot dogs and pull the giant KOSI Bear head off a heat-stroking intern. No more could I carry on the deception that "yes, in a few minutes I'll play your song." Disillusioned children all over the metro area are still waiting and hoping. It will not happen.

And maybe Tom, whose unceremonious exit from Alice led him to a station in Milwaukee, won't want to hear it, but one more quick note about myself. The studio walls have come crashing down and the boy bands have all but died or gone gay, and now after coming full circle from funny, to not funny, to desperate, to unemployed, I hope you offer a friendly honk to the lonely deejay in the cell phone parking lot while you drive on by to tonight's stand-up show at Jazz at Jacks.

My latest plan: f@ck it. Be funny.

Not conducive to career growth.

1:30 am

I can't sleep.  I was but then Paco went crazy.  I awoke to him wrestling something, maybe a halibut, and then dozed off.  Then I awoke again when my wife asked, "Jared is he choking?" and I found myself standing over the successfully removed blockage.  It was a variety of things, some lint, a rubber band and that dog mucous goo that comes up when they start doing the deep dog hack.  People don't move much faster than when a dog starts doing the vomit cough.  The dog is going through some major health crises and the more evolved species usually responds by throwing him outside. 

I imagine Paco's stomach resembles a wall in a TGI Fridays.  An accordion next to some antique sporting equipment  and a family picture.  It'll all have to come up sometime. 

Check the papers for a garage sale in Englewood. 

Update on Friday, July 28, 2006 at 06:52AM by ewy

My brother sends encouraging email:

Are they not the greatest things. just wait until you cook a roast, the dog eats the strings out of the trash and you have to pull it out of the dogs ass (true story). Same will go for christmas tree tinsel (out of a cats ass). The furry ones can be big pain in the asses, but they will alwasy be there when you need them. You know i would have more if i had the space and the way to keep all of them from harm. If you checked out CNN.com yesterday there was the amazing story of the dog the was being put down in South Carolina in a gas chamber. The process takes 30 minutes using carbon dioxide. Well so much for that, one of the dogs lived. It has now been rescued. Pretty damn amazing. 

Terror, Drugs Passe, Here's Fodder for New War!

You'll hear from various people a variety of things that lead to drug use.  Some say it's marijuana.  But if you're smoking weed you're already using drugs and I'd say it's near impossible to be lead where you already are.  Unless maybe you are stoned.  And beer as a gateway?  Never have I sipped a Strohs and thought, "Man, an elephant tranquilizer would hit the spot right now."  The president of some neighborhood organization of bored mothers will announce that "Marijuana is a gateway drug."  Yet I've never heard someone who is stoned say, "now I need some black tar!"  No they will request a pizza.   Perhaps pot opens the gates to obesity?

Here's why people start doing drugs:  they don't know what they are doing.  If you don't know what you are doing you are bound to do anything.  For example, right now (other than sharing my typographical Tourette's with you) I'm trying to figure out how to make an impressive Powerpoint.  I see those people in ads and in movies and all they  do is plug in and animated charts explode onto the screen.  A soundtrack of inspirational music accompanies a visual layout so stunning that Disney could option it for a theme park attraction.  I want that, but don't know how so I want a beer and a cigarette.  Somehow that seems like the perfect thing to do.  My brain isn't able to kick on and so I'll kill part of it.  And while I'm at it I'll set an example for my lungs, "no oxygen for you until the brain does it's job."  And then like when the basketball coach made the entire team run until I wrote "I do not agree with Meeker's coach that we are mediocre" twenty times on the lockerroom blackboard I could use peer pressure from a wrongly punished respiratory system to motivate my nerve center.  

Think of one of the actual gateway to drugs, higher education, and you'll note that what most students do is sit around their dorm rooms and try to figure out what to do.  "Whaddya wanna do?" could be a school mantra.  Maybe a call and response cheer.  Opposite bleachers yelling "whaddya wanna do?" and their counterparts shouting back "we don't know!" and then the guy cheerleaders would throw a girl in the air while the others too heavy to toss  excitedly jump around. 

Yet for those who don't know what they are doing there is no answer until someone comes up with drugs.  Or a cult.

"Whaddya want to do?"  

"I don't know."  

"Good.  Have some Kool-Aid."  

It's that simple.  And terror?  Yep. 

"Ahmed, whaddya wanna do?" 

"Blam!" 

I bet if Osama had an X-box and some weed we'd still have our towers. 

The War on Not Knowing What To Do begins now.  And I can't think of a better way to start it than with a beer.

Free Range Mind Wanders, Gets Lost

I just went downtown to sit in the dark and silently pray for a quick ending to the latest version of Miami Vice.  I really do have hope for Colin Farrell.  Like parents of a wayward child, I hold out knowing that if he keeps trying he'll one day have a movie that doesn't make me want to find him and waste a good portion of his life  by putting my face real close to his and making pouty faces for eight hours (the running total for New World, Phone Booth and Miami Vice...I say 'running' because New World may very well still be dragging on...)

But I shan't digress.   Digression is the point I need to make.  And I need to make it quickly before I get sidetracked.

After escaping the clutches of cinematic mediocrity, I embarked on the second reason I had ventured into the heart of Denver.  And that was to give my wife her keys.  She left them on the counter this morning so I though I could surprise her by dropping them off at her work. 

 I'm now at home, her key still safely ensconced in my pocket.

What happened?  Well this might make a better mystery than most blockbuster movies...

Bats don't leave caves as fast as I left the dreary confines of Denver Pavilions theater #8.  At least for now Sonny and Tubbs had won Miami's war on drugs, but I was starving.  My first item of business was to find something quick to eat.  Secondly I would stop by Sarah's work and give her the keys.  I was on my way.

Not looking to fast while I waited for food I wandered the 16th Street Ped Mall in search of food that was actually fast. 

I was in a hurry.   I had to get back to little Paco.  He was at home wondering what his big, fuzzy biped does for three hours on the other side of the door.  (I often leave through the kitchen and come back via the shed door so he'll think I'm magic.)  So with my mind starting to conjure images of our baby dog, weakened by sad loneliness, being  overwhelmed by legions of backyard bugs, I intensified my search for food.  I peered into window of a Taco Bell.  Beyond the shocked patrons staring back at my perspiring face was a long line snaking about the restaurant.  Subway and Jamba Juice had people waiting on the sidewalk. 

I tried to move forward faster but a family of very large people formed a slow-moving road block.  I started to ponder the many adverse affects of obesity.   Sure our health suffers but what about progress and production.  While smaller people of Asian country's are whizzing about getting things done we've slowed to the pace of  Brontosauruses in a sack race.  And why do really heavy teenagers wear skimpy outfits?   So I managed to slide between a parked bus and the Ample Duds Calendar Girl to get to a hot dog vendor. 

An "all-beef" dog was only a buck.  The mustard and sauerkraut replenished my will to move on with my agenda.  Next I'd stop in the Virgin Megastore and find a gift for Sarah.  There's a big sale going on there right now.  I don't know what's discounted but it's not the girly magazines.  Those are so expensive that the young man could only hide behind a book rack and read one.  I was looking for computer speakers for Sarah's work PC when I nearly tripped over this little moaning beacon to the end of human decency.  He didn't flinch.  Just pulled the August Penthouse closer to his face.  He wasn't far from first base.  For a second I wondered where he'd found the magazine.  Then emerging from the chaos of people scavenging for deals, a Virgin employee (that store name really doesn't do much for their people)  asked me if he could help me. 

No, they do not have computer speakers.  Those are old school.  The store associate was hardly a Virgin at sales and gave the entire rundown of IPod accessories and other life-changing accoutrements.  

Back on the street I sought a trash can for my hot dog tissue.  I balled it up and nailed a basket from about ten feet.  Upon where I realized I'd landed some condiment on my shirt.  A hot dog tissue would have been handy to wipe it away.

I'm scared of Radio Shack and their strange Hobbit-like employees but seeing one of their stores just down the street made my day.  I ran in and was immediately greeted by a huge fan of hair gel who wanted me to get a set of PC speakers with a ten-inch woofer.  "These are the best" he said.  "I think she'll need something a little more conspicuous" I replied.  I eventually found some speakers that wouldn't compromise the structure of an office building.  Radio Frodo warned me he "didn't know that much about them."  He told me that in the kind of dire tone a Miami drug dealer might use when discussing bringing in a partner who could actually be an informant.  I took my chances.

A couple of blocks and 19 floors later I surprised my beautiful smiling wife.  We hooked up her speakers.  We listened to an orchestral stanza from her Hamlet soundtrack (not Mel's but Branagh).  They sounded great.  We parted.  A bus showed up just as I left her work.  It took me a block from my car.  I went home.  

Now I need to call my wife and tell her she forgot her keys.   

Music Suggestion

Bruce Springsteen.  The Seeger Sessions.  On this great cover CD/DVD The Boss pays tribute to Pete Seeger by ripping into some rousing renditions of the legendary folk singer's songs.  Even if you're not someone who is all that fond of banjos and you'd rather use a wash tub for laundry, after a spin with the Seeger Sessions you'll find yourself feeling a whole lot better about the world and yourself. 

On Hold during Family Tragedy

They say that you never see it coming.  You can worry all you want about whatever you want but you'll never expect or know when the worst will happen.  Yesterday I was all tied up in knots thinking about my comedy show in Greeley on Friday, July 21, at 8:30PM in The Magnus, 801 9th St, Greeley (970) 392-0080--no cover--when it happened.

The 'Geniuses' at the Apple Store broke it to me that they'd have to keep my Powerbook G4 for at least 48 hours.  (And I'm serious.  They call themselves geniuses and even have a sign that says so.  If they get any more heady I'll have to remind them of their IIE days when all you could do on an Apple is play that Oregon Trail trivia game or watch a green square bounce around.)  I have not been away from my Mac for more than just a few minutes since purchasing it in May, 2005.  Of course since then they've come out with a laptop four times as fast, but my laptop is still the king of computers.  It's the sexy silver one you see in all of the Starbucks commercials.  Cool, coffee-drinking labrador owners use the G4.  Sure soon they'll all be dangerously sipping twelve-dollar lattes over the latest Mac, but for a brief moment I share a taste in technology with the 24-Hour Fitness, SUV crowd.  No matter how superficial my satisfaction may seem, it does feel good.  We all want to be like those people in the Abercrombie ads, smiling and beautiful and never sweating or smelling.  Even though my diagnosed 'hyperhydrosis' has me diluting my Maxwell House while I lean over it and my computer in the summer heat of my shedio, I still get a little glimpse of what it must be like not to require regular towelings and have a loft apartment made of oak, granite and endorsed by the cast of Friends.  Now I'm on the PC that hides in the basement.  In 2003 I got it for 400 bucks at Wal Mart.  Some angry, underpaid Indonesian was seeking to bring down the White Devil when he made this.  Although it could be said that I single-handedly ruined this PC with downloaded porn, I have since abandoned it for my Mac, which I'm pretty sure could handle all the daily doings at NORAD...just not the build-up of my body dander (really, you could weave a rug out of the sheddings in the keyboard).  And there was that one Amber Bock that took a dive into the Powerbook.  And one night, while trying to save time by doing push-ups and water the garden simultaneously, I lost control of the hose and it soaked my Mac.  But now the loss I'm dealing with helps put in perspective how important to me my laptop has become.  And why only hairless, Evian drinkers should own them.

Sister Goes Crazy for Second Year in a Row

Last year for my nephew's fifth birthday my sister threw an Army-themed party.  She had her then-boyfriend build a fort, dig foxholes and create a simulated battlefield in her backyard.  That would drive away most sane men.  But Dan came back.  This year, indentured as her fiance, Dan built a castle.  My sister made a cake that would make Martha Stewart hotter than shower time at Camp Cupcake.  This year's birthday pastry was a frosted castle with turrets and all.   Last year's was a battlefield with edible munitions. 

By the time he's 16 I'm not sure what Tyler will expect.  But I have a feeling Dan will get to save his fort-building energy for his third job.  Ferraris are expensive. 

But fun was had by all.  Legions of kids showed up with whichever parent "had the weekend" and some of those parents brought their new girl and/or boyfriends who sometimes also "had the weekend" so the party grew near exponentially.  That very well could have been because there was a keg.  No kid's party is worth your time unless it has twenty gallons of cold beer.   

It's helps to curb the stinging pain of a dozen miniature frosting junkies mindlessly beating you with plastic swords.    Unfortunately the castle's dungeon was only pretend.