See Ya Later, Alternator

Wednesday February 27th, 2013 – Chicago, IL

   What good would being Mr. Lucky be without at least a weekly crisis to perpetuate my legend? Why would I want my life to operate smoothly when I can maintain a constant level of stress and high tension that keeps me wound tighter than Oprah’s underwear the day after Thanksgiving?

I’ve had my fill and then some of these funky tales of woe, but the cosmic dispatcher cares not and sends more whether I want them or not. It’s like a delivery of sand to the desert – I’ve got all I can use for the next 40,000 years, thank you. Put the boxes back on the truck and leave. Please.

As if I didn’t have enough to be concerned with fighting the weather conditions on my way to Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago tonight, I had the extra fun of having my alternator puke on my already overpriced ‘free’ car. I’ve had alternators puke before, but I can’t remember one doing it in such nasty weather conditions and that made for a high stress 50 mile trek through snowy hell.

Anyone who has experienced the death of an alternator knows the symptoms all too well. First, the ‘battery’ light comes on the dash board. That’s a light that usually comes on very briefly only when the car is started, and then goes right back off. When it pops on in traffic, there’s trouble.

I was fighting to get a left turn completed in an unplowed intersection without sliding into a big old pickup truck coming the other way when I noticed the light pop on and I knew I was screwed immediately. The alternator keeps the battery charged, and now I’d be draining it with having to keep all my accessories running like lights, wipers, heat and radio to keep me abreast of traffic.

The light came on as I was still about 45 miles away on a 50 mile trip, and now it became a big race to either find a rental car place that was open or make it as far into Chicago as I could so I’d at least be able to get a bus, train or cab to Old Town to make it to Zanies for my 8:30 show. I am the headliner this week, so I don’t go on until about 9:15, so that was my very latest arrival time.

And if all that still wasn’t enough to rock my world, I had a radio interview scheduled with my friend Evan Ginzburg in New York on his show called ‘Legends Radio’. Evan is a great guy and we share not only a love for professional wrestling, but also funk music. He likes George Clinton and Bootsy Collins like I do, and was also a producer of the ‘The Wrestler’ with Mickey Rourke.

Evan also manages Luscious Johnny Valiant, a wrestler who wants to become a comedian. He’s a guy I used to boo the hell out of when I was a kid, and it’s all surreal that we’ve managed to get connected all these years later. I’ve talked to Johnny and at some point hope to work with him on a comedy show. Evan is up for it too, and we’ve become friends in the last few years. I like him.

It was too late to cancel, so I did the interview to the best of my ability as I plowed through the snow helplessly watching my lights get dimmer the entire way. My wipers slowed down and my radio eventually faded until I finally stalled completely two blocks from Zanies. I had to hang up and push my car to a tow zone, and then pray it wouldn’t be towed as I did my show at Zanies – which actually went very well. The audience had no idea of my troubles, and that’s being a pro.

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Just Another Day

Sunday January 20^th, 2013 – Kenosha, WI

   Today was one of those days that when it’s all over will go down as one where nothing at all of any substance or significance happened. We all have thousands of those in our lives, kind of like pulls on a slot machine. Once in a while a jackpot might be hit, but more often than not – zilcho.

I didn’t get home from my show until just after 3am. We’re having a brutally cold spell of late, and my car heater doesn’t blow as much heat as I’d like so I was freezing the entire way home. It felt great to slide under the covers and I added an extra blanket so I could warm up and nod out.

I had originally planned to get up early and get my walking in, but when 7am came I could feel the arctic blast as I got up to get dressed so I crawled right back into the toasty rack for what was supposed to be just a few minutes. The next thing I knew it was 11:30 and my day was half over.

I’ve been all over the place lately and not sleeping a lot, so I guess it was good to get in a solid chunk like that because I felt great upon awakening. It felt so good that a few minutes later I was out again and didn’t wake up until 4:30. That was probably a bit much, but that’s what happened.

Now I was mad at myself for wasting a whole day, and my phone and email message stacks I’d planned on shrinking were instead growing by the hour. A lot of friends know they’ve got a good chance to reach me on Sundays, and it’s often my busiest day for hearing from several of them.

There was no way I could get to all the messages, as I needed to get to Kenosha by 8pm to host ‘The Mothership Connection’ radio show on AM 1050 WLIP. I haven’t spent much time on that project of late, and it’s good I didn’t because there was a malfunction at the station due to severe weather and the satellite was down and there was no national news feed at the top of every hour.

That’s the time we use to take a break for a couple of minutes to get ready for our next guest or hit the head or whatever we need to do to keep the show moving. Not having that made it harder to maintain a flow, and it was a pain in the ass quite frankly. Too bad, as it wasn’t to be fixed.

As with that or the faulty sound system at the comedy show yesterday, all there is to do is deal with it and move on. Radio and comedy and life in general is just a series of individual events of various length, with again very few having a particular identity. It all blends in to the big picture.

Our show tonight wasn’t particularly horrible, but we didn’t blow any dust out of the speakers or make Marconi proud of his invention. We got through the four hours, and that was about it. It was fun, but at the end of my life I can’t see myself reflecting on this day one way or the other.

I slept most of it away, and the time I was awake I didn’t do anything special. I didn’t change the world, and I barely changed my underwear. It was just a day, like so many others we all have where nothing particularly good or bad happens. I guess it could always be worse, but it could be better too. I like to shoot for the days that stand out, but there just aren’t that many of them in the lives of most people. I’m learning to take each day as it comes, but this one failed to stand out.