Monet & Me

Whenever I see a flyer for one of the "sketch comedy!" groups that are always around I just roll my eyes, knowing they're 1) not funny and 2) annoying (the sole exception being, of course, when The State was on MTV in 1994ish. Now THAT was funny.) There is no way I would ever think about joining such a group; my thinking being "what a buncha losers" coupled with a completely unfounded arrogance of fuck that, I'm funnier than them. I know what's funny, you don't; why would I surround myself with a bunch of hyper/loud dudes trying to impress each other? Sit down, shut the fuck up! But there is sometimes a bug in my brain, that slight jealousy that wishes I had a group of guys that I could sit around with and create comedy. Come up with it, film it, boom! move on. I've never had that (tho, as I'm now confessing, I've never seeked it either.) Oh, I have plenty of friends that are funny, but I'm talking about a Sid Caeser/Larry Gelbart sitting in a room cranking out the stuff for hours. I'm not naturally funny just to look at and I don't have an accent and I'm not quirky, but I could do that shit: want a joke about an ardvarks? You got it. Here's a newspaper, gimme 10 jokes in an hour, no problem. All while coming up with higher-concept stuff in the back; just some warm bodies at that point to carry the shit out that I want. Today we're doing a bit about Abraham Lincoln waking up hung over the day after he had freed the slaves ("I did WHAT???!!!!!") Sit down, shut the fuck up, do as I say! I'll never have a group like that; as arrogant as I am about what I know is funny, my insecurities re: being a joiner would overwhelm everything else. Unless the 4 funniest people I know walk up to me and say "lead us, Xmastime!", it's prolly not happening. What made me think of this is I'm watching The Impressionists, and apparently Monet walks into Paris and stumbles into about 6 guys that think and act just like himself. Oh, Renoir, hello! Chezien, waddup brah! (I have no idea how to spell Chezian. obviously.) They just sit around all day and paint, and talk about painting, what they wanna do, etc etc etc. Feed off each other. I feel like if I had walked into Paris at the exact same time, thinking the exact same way they did about painting and the future of art, I would've walked right by their gang completely unawares and then burned silently at their success while working at Les Starbucks next door. Brazenly arrogant, yet too unsure to peep in "what're guys talking about?" Monet for nothing and that Radiohead album for free (beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep) On a completely different side note...as the program was starting, I quickly Wikipedia'd Monet and learned he was born in 1840. Before thinking, I immediately thought oh shit, he's gonna be in the Civil War! Ha!!! What an idiot...but isn't this something, how important certain dates and decades are to us as a country that don't mean a thing to other countries? I mean, you hear of 1861-65 and you think well, the Civil War. But would someone from, say, Ireland? Of course not. And not only do these dates mean something to us, but we of course think the rest of the world sat out making history for themselves at those times and just waited patiently for our historical moments to come to an end before picking up again with their own. I would assume it's the same from each country. 9/11 don't mean shit to some dude in Brazil, July 4 ain't a day off in Luxenburg. Funny.