Growing Up Catholic - an epic three-part essay on accidentally setting your church on fire and saying "F***!" by accident the first time

It's been nearly 3 weeks since i last posted, but had a little writer's block on this baby, a rare problem for me...But I've wanted to write a comedic epic on my growing up Catholic years for ages and it finally poured out of me last night: 4617 words in 8 hours. It's divided by **** marks into three sections if you need to split it up...Please lemme know your thoughts!

GROWING UP CATHOLIC

I’ll never forget the time T.J. Hargett spilled the Precious Blood of Christ on his white Adidas sneakers while pulling altar boy duty in front of 400 classmates at St. Edward’s Catholic School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

It was a typical morning during my 3rd grade year, during which we had to go to Mass twice a week before class. Depending on the day, Mass was an alternately mystical or boring experience that at the very least killed off the first half-hour of the school day.

Sure, you could say I’m being slightly blasphemous for admitting we were often bored in church. But if Isaid it was great, I’d be slightly lying – ok, not slightly. Gimme a break – I was 8! I’d rather be out doodling pictures of fast cars and Superman in my notebook at class!

On this day, however, EVERYONE perked up and paid attention. T.J. had done the unthinkable and perhaps even the unforgivable. Father Peter – sweet old octogenarian Father Peter – had just invoked a blessing on a chalice full of wine, transforming it into what we believed was the Sacred Blood of Christ – when T.J. sneezed and wham! The chalice slipped and the Blood was everywhere!

Now thankfully, it doesn’t REALLY turn into blood as we know it, or T.J. would’ve REALLY been freaking out. Not to mention, the carpeting would have been a lot more difficult to clean. But because of the sacred nature of this divine mistake, every one of the 425 students of St. Edward’s let out a collective gasp of horror.

Father Peter looked like HE was going to have a stroke himself. He was paralyzed by fear and confusion. He couldn’t just LEAVE it there, staining the carpet, and he couldn’t sop it up and expect people to drink it. He finally ran backstage to the sacristy and - I imagine - flipped through a big priestly guidebook like “Mass for Dummies” or “The Idiot’s Guide to Mass Mishaps”. And there he found the answer….grab a towel and soak up as much of the Blood as possible before having to re-consecrate another chalice of wine. I wound up getting whacked in the back of the head by my teacher when I snorted loudly at the sight of TJ crying as Father Peter sopped up the situation.

Of course, that wasn’t the only moment of Holy Bloopers and High Drama I ever encountered during Mass at St. Edwards’s. There was the time when I myself almost burned the church down to the ground in 4th grade, when I was lighting the altar candles and accidentally caught my altar boy robe on fire. I ran to the backstage area and proceeded to put out the flame-maker by dousing it into a trash can – a trash can filled with paper and dead roses.

As the flames shot heavenward from the top of the garbage, Father Peter once again had to save the day with a combination of priestly prayer and firefighting heroics. Of course, everyone in my class laughed at me afterwards – especially TJ Hargett, who was returning the favor for my loudly snorting at him during the Blood On the Sneakers incident.

There were also moments worse than those, which thankfully happened to other people. Like the time a guy named Brian (who begged me to take his name out when he found this online) brought the St. Edward’s communion line to a standstill when the Communion host – the Precious Body of Christ! – fell off his tongue and onto the floor. That time, Father Peter made him pick it up off the floor and swallow it as I tried not to giggle at the sheer EWWWW! GROSS!-ness of the moment.

And how could I forget the time little Tracy Shollmeier got sick in the middle of St. Edward’s giant old church and had to run for it, her shoes click-clacking down the seemingly mile-long center aisle towards the back of the church, racing futilely against time as Father Peter froze to see what all the racket was, and giving the rest of us a clear earshot of little Tracy making it to the lobby – but not out the door – before she puked up her breakfast all over the Precious Marble Flooring?

At least it was easier to clean than carpet and she got sick BEFORE communion, sparing Father Peter from another desperate round of searching for answers on what to do over a piece of Christ being unexpectedly desecrated.

These are the moments I recall when people ask me with surprise about why I’m still a practicing Catholic a full 15 years after leaving my home and my parents’ rock-hard rule over my life. Ok, I’m naturally pre-disposed to seeking spiritual pursuits, but could any other church invoke the guilt necessary to turning a worship service into a masterful display of schadenfreude?

Let’s face it, though. Being an altar boy is a heavy trip and a lot of responsibility. You have to put on fancy robes and stand next to the priest at the altar throughout Mass and help with the mystical transformation of bread and wine into the Lord Himself, then be asked not a drop anything – and an 8 year old boy is ALWAYS dropping SOMETHING!!!

And then add in the fact that once Mass starts and you’re seated or standing next to the priest, there’s no chance to get away to the bathroom. I always managed to hold it, but I’ll never forget the time an altar boy named John who was a year younger than me had to, as he so succinctly put it, “go wee.” There was no way for him to get up and go, so in my best older-brother mode of sage, year-older, veteran altar boy wisdom whispered back, “It’s OK. Just go. No one will even notice. Your robe will hide it.”

I didn’t really know if that was true – hell, I wanted to find out for myself what would happen if an altar boy took a whiz while on duty! But I figured his robes would hide any telltale mark of shame.

Well, maybe they WOULD have – if his robes were black. Instead, they were red.

Whoops! Wrong choice of fashion that day!

Not only did an undeniable trickling noise occur, but John soon had a giant circle of shameful wet urine soaking the front of his robes. As we were asked to stand and deliver Communion to the congregation that day, John mysteriously stayed back in his seat, crying and refusing to stand again until the entire church except for his family were gone.

At least I know John learned an indelible lesson that day. About eight years later, he was a year behind me at Little Rock Catholic High, but had grown into a giant bully. I once saw him as a sophomore shoving a freshman around until I stepped up to him and whispered, “You gotta wee?” He teared up, ran away and never bullied anyone again.

Actually, the John Peeing Incident happened at my other favorite Catholic place – the chapel up at the VA hospital where my dad worked and where we actually lived amid a row of special doctors’ housing for a couple years. On weekdays, we’d have the bizarre joy of our mom warning us not to look out the kitchen window because a mental patient had wandered into our yard, was standing outside with his pants down, and was watering the lawn without a garden hose.

On weekends, we’d go to the most unpredictable Mass ever – where you had dozens of mentally disabled war vets seeming to compete for the title of who would do the craziest thing each week.

That title was almost invariably taken by one James Keever, a 55 year old man who had bipolar disorder and excitedly insisted on reading the Scripture passages from the pulpit whenever he was attending Mass.

That approval was something that the VA priest would come to regret.

Most weeks, he was fine, but once in a while, he’d be so filled with Christ’s joy that he’d apparently forget to put a belt on before he took to the pulpit. Yet he also wasn’t spontaneous enough to adapt when surprises overtook him. On at least three occasions, months apart, Keever stood up to read the week’s Gospel passage only to find that his unbuckled pants had fallen down around his ankles.

At least he still was wearing patriotic, flag-colored boxers – or it would’ve really been awkward watching as he acted like his pants had never fallen in the first place. That self-denial – or perhaps, an overdeveloped yet misplaced sense of propriety – meant that James Keever wouldn’t acknowledge his collapsed pants until he was done wit h a Scripture passage and had blessed the congregation. Then he’d hike up his pants and stumble in embarrassment out the back of the church, vowing never to be seen again but nonetheless guaranteed to come bug the priest for another chance within another two weeks.

After the third time James Keever’s pants fell, however, the VA priest instituted a strict must-wear-belt policy on James if he hoped to ever read publicly again. And in a masterstroke move, the priest actually told him that pants were now an Official Vatican Policy. James had no option, and from then on managed to keep his pants up around his waist rather than down around his ankles. It made Mass a lot less entertaining, but thankfully ensured I’d never get whacked by my Mom again for laughing at James from the altar.
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Now, I had a colorful imagination as a kid about how the world works. And I was in trouble a lot in Catholic school, as you might imagine. While I was well-acquainted with the classroom corner of seemingly every grade I went through at St. Edward’s – having been forced to stand in the corner any time I made a disruptive wisecrack in class – I always was a little too clever for my own good when it came to taking notes home to my parents from the teacher.

Mrs. Weinzimer was my 2nd grade teacher and she sent home plenty of notes with me. Unfortunately, she also had a sense of trust in me to actually BRING my parents the notes and have them read them.

I, on the other hand, had my own diabolical plans for her handwritten screeds against my behavior. I figured, if she’s not going to make them sign them, then why bring them the letters at all? Instead, I would accept the note from her, looking sorrowful, then take the note home in my backpack, read it in the bathroom located in the attic of our giant old doctor’s mansion on the VA grounds, and flush it down that toilet – somehow assuring myself that if it was flushed from an attic toilet, it was even more protected from ever being seen and read again.

Each time I flushed down a letter, I would be nervous for about two weeks afterward. The reason is that I thought there were special city employees who worked in the sewers and sorted through all the papers that floated their way – with a special crew assigned to finding the letters that teachers sent home with their troublemaking students. I figured if these mysterious men hadn’t found my flushed letters within two weeks, I was in the clear.

(Yes, I know that sounds nutty for a kid to be conjuring up those wild flights of fancy about how a city works. But I was a weird kid. And yes, I had an ulcer by the time I was 12.)

But there was one time I got in so much trouble, it changed everything.

I was in 2nd grade, still under the oppressive regime of Ms. Weinzimer. One day I’m sitting at Mass when the kid next to me, Harlan (again, all names are true), does something that makes me laugh. I mean, we are giggling HARD, as in cover your mouth and turn red from clamping on yourself.

It is the carefree laugh of a child, a child filled with such 2nd grade joy that he needs not have a reason, but as we snort, giggle and guffaw suddenly the Hand of Justice – aka Miss Virginia Weinzimer – clamped down on each of us, grabbing us by the back collars of our little blue uniform shirts and virtually lifting us over the back of our pews an d into seats right next to her.

Laugh Time is over.

We wound up being marched back to class at the front of the line, led by Ms. Weinzimer herself, and forced to stand in front of the class as she gave us a her own modern version of the Spanish Inquisition.

“Why were you laughing?”

I didn’t know. It was amazing to experience an Alzheimer’s-worthy blackout at such a young age, I’ll admit, but that’s what happened. I had literally no idea what we were laugh ing at. Her grabbing us so suddenly had knocked the memory out of me, apparently. And Harlan – poor, rednecky Harlan (come on, I can call him a redneck; his name was HARLAN) – was just standing there, apparently unable to muster a syllable of English under such duress.

It was up to me to answer, and Ms. Weinzimer was bearing down. Hard.

“Tell me! Tell us! Why. Were. You. Laughing??? Tell me, or I’ll send you to the principal’s office and have Sister Hermana beat an answer out of you with her paddle.”

I had to summon an answer. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I said…

“Father Peter was coughing a lot…” I whimpered.

“And that’s funny to you?!”

Holy crap! I realized then that I had said just about the Dumbest Thing of My Entire Seven Years on the Planet. What WAS I thinking?! Of course an 80-something year-old priest hacking his way through a Mass in front of a bunch of children wasn’t funny!!!

As my peers eyed me with venom worthy of staring down the Devil himself, I knew nothing good was going to come of this. And sure enough, Mrs. Weinzimer was quaking with anger as she said what came=2 0next.

“Boys and girls, this word may shock you, but it’s in the Bible!”

Everyone hunched forward to hear what was about to fly out of her mouth.

“Carl, you…are…a…jackass!”

WHAT?!

A seismic gasp shot thr ough the room, as every kid in the place also heaved with shock. I was horrified, because I was only a 7 year old Catholic school kid, and as bad as I was, no one ever used the “A-double-S” word on me before. I didn’t know whether to cry or shriek or just shut up and take it. So I shut up and took it.

Amazingly, Ms. Weinzimer didn’t send me out of the office. Instead, she wrote my parents a letter, which I was once again expected to hand to them. This time it was stapled shut. I still didn’t care. I was gonna read it and flush it right down the drain like usual.

The next day, I came back to school, filled with my usual ulcer-inducing fear of having my note caught by the hard-working fellows in the city’s Sanitation Department. But I resolved to put on a better show of my contrition than usual for Ms. Weinzimer.

“So, did you show your parents my note last night, Carl?” she asked, smirking with self-satisfaction.

I not only answered, I rubbed my butt for show. The stakes were high, you know.

“Yeah, my dad whipped me good!” I replied, wincing as I touched the supposedly affected area.

Mrs. Weinzimer said “I’m glad you learned your lesson,” and moved on to teaching our class! I had gotten away with it!!!!

Or so I thought.

Over the next month, I was a friggin’ saint. I figured that this note had been so bad that it wouldn’t just take two weeks to be safe from the Sanitation Department’s investigative work, but a full month. So I was polite, friendly, respectful, and hard-working: all traits that had long been foreign to me.

In fact, I was so well-behaved that Ms. Weinzimer was downright excited to see my Mom when she one day wasn’t able to make it to school in time to pick me up like normal. Nope, Mom was half an hour late and the principal asked Ms. Weinzimer to wait after school for me to get picked up safely.

So20my mom walked in and she and Ms. Weinzimer exchanged excessive, smile-filled pleasantries. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but as long as they were Chatty Cathies, I figured I was fine. In fact, I myself had forgotten what a demon I had once been.

But after a few minutes, it became apparent that they hadn’t forgotten. For suddenly, the tone of their conversation had changed and their smiles had disappeared. Now they were speaking fast and furious to each other in a series of whispers, while also scowling at me and gradually working their way into being downright pissed-looking.

All I knew was, I was in trouble.

My mom stormed over, took my hand and said “You’re coming with me!”

Well, no kidding, mom. Who else was gonna be allowed to take me?

We got to the outside parking lot, and she said “I just learned all about those letters you were supposed to be showing me.”
Holy crap, again! I looked around frantically for a means of escape, a safe house, a concerned and friendly adult who could save me from the emotional agony to come.

But there was no one to save me from my mother, and I got in the car with her. I knew this would be ugly, and sure enough I was proven right.

“No lollipop today!”

WHAT?! I thought, but I was afraid to verbalize it.

“And maybe not ever!!!”

Oh my God! This was like being assigned to an eternity in Purgatory for a 7 year old!

But it all turned out ok. Looking back, I feel like a prisoner who stared down hard time. No lollipop for a month? I can handle 20 years, bro! At least that ’s what my inner gangbanger says.

But having TV taken away for a week – THAT was a bitch.

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There still was one thing that happened that trumps all my memories of growing up Catholic. It was the first time I said the word “Fuck.”

Now, that isn’t something one normally remembers, I don’t think. You kind of blurt it out to sound tough, or you slam something into your toe, scream it out and voila you’ve sworn and it’s not a big deal anymore and you keep on swearing.

But my first time saying the “F word” was when I was six.

Yes, you read right. Six.

It seemed to be an innocent enough day. The sky was sun-dappled, the air filled with a light breeze, and I was playing a rousing yet wholesome game of Monopoly around an outdoor picnic table across the street from my home.

This was at the giant, old, cool but creepy Addams Family/Munsters-style mansion that my dad rented on the grounds of the VA during our first two years in Arkansas. My mom was outside the house watering plants. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect day – and it helped that I was winning the game. Clobbering everyone in sight, in fact.

“Everyone” consisted of four neighbor kids and my sister, Krystyna, who is a year and a half older than me and actually pretty cool in her a dulthood. She was cool then, too, but each of us had been bred with a streak of goody-two-shoes-ness that made each of us want to rat out the other over the slightest indiscretion, in the hopes of scoring points with our hard-to-please parents.

So when I said “THE WORD”, all hell broke loose.

Now how, you might ask, does the word “Fuck” come into play when one is, well, playing a board game at age six?

Well I was so thrilled at my latest show of domination in Monopoly – perhaps it was the placement of a hotel on Park Avenue – that I reared back and yelped out, “This is fun!”

Only, instead of saying “fun,” I said that…other…word.

Yep, Big Ol’ Moronic Me actually said “This is fuck!”

I knew the second I said it that I was headed for trouble. This was nuke-the-world kind of trouble for a strictly raised Catholic kid. And my sister, after her initial shock and the utter silence that both she and our playmates displayed, knew that she was sitting on a gold mine of a problem for me.

She knew that if she could report me she’d be Queen of the House for eternity, with her choice of TV programs accepted without question for all time. I would be seen as so awful, and she would be seen as so holy, that I would never get to pick a movie or vacation destination ever again.

I somehow concluded, in that split second of shock, that it would be wiser for me to run up and tell my mom what I’d done rather than let my sister beat me to it. So after a three-second staredown in which both our intentions became wildly apparent, we both leaped up and ran towards my mom.

My sister just called out “Mom! Mom!” She was smart.

I blurted out, under a veil of tears, “Mom, I said fuck! I said fuck!”

Now, I didn’t even know what the word meant. I had barely ever heard it before either – I was six. But it was one of those mysterious things that a kid can somehow understand at a preternaturally young age: there are some words that you know are seen as inherently awful and even evil.

And “fuck” was one of them.

My mom reacted in what was both an utterly insane and yet utterly expected manner. She dropped both her jaw and her garden hose and proceeded to grab me by the back of my pants and start slapping my bottom while shrieking “Why?” and “Wait til your father gets home!”

I know that “Wait til your father gets home!” is, or at least was, the Great American Threat to Childhood. It was the ultimate early warning that your ass was gonna get beat, and you’d better make a run for it with whatever you had in your piggy bank.

The Joads had made a go of it. And they were in the midst of the Great Depression. What was holding your sorry ass back?

I made plans to move out of my house, but then reality struck me when I realized I had about 42 cents to my name. Why couldn’t I lose more teeth? I wondered. That would make me a few bucks from the Tooth Fairy.

But eventually my dad did get home, and my mom found a way to share my new linguistic prowess with him. He ordered me down to the bathroom, where he proceeded to ask me to uncover my backside while he slipped off his belt.

This wasn’t going to end well.

Thankfully, my dad was a sensitive European man of culture, rather than an ass-beating American cretin. He actually said, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you,” and MEANT it. He had me bend over, reared back with his belt a little bit (seriously, just a smidge) and let me have it at about half-speed velocity.

Sure, it still hurt. But sure enough, it seemed to hurt him more. He actually started crying. And he also stopped after two whacks. I couldn’t believe my good fortune! But I did feel bad for hurting his feelings and hugged him anyway.

But he still wanted to know: where did I hear that word?

And, strangely enough, I had an answer for him: I didn’t even know what it meant, or that it was necessarily a bad word. But I did know that I’d seen it etched into the wall of a bathroom stall in the boys’ room for 1st through 4th graders. So I told him I saw it on the bathroom wall at school.

He couldn’t believe it. Not at a Catholic school! (Well, looking back, it probably WAS hard to believe.)

So the next morning, Dad wound up driving me to school. This was a rare occasion - but one befitting the importance of the moment. He had shocking news to deliver to our principal, and he was going to deliver it personally.

We walked into the principal’s office as an odd pair, for sure. I looked nauseously afraid, while he looked mournful yet outraged. The principal was an ancient and, of course, stern-faced nun named Sister Hermana – aka Sister Sister for the Hispanically inclined. This was about a decade before hip-hop took over the culture, so I never got as much comedic mileage out of her as I should have.

My dad was afraid to tell her what was up, so when she asked, he said he would write her a note. She said “Well couldn’t you have done that without leaving home?”

She clearly wasn’t aware of the d ire implications of what she was about to read.

My dad said, “My son saw a bad word here.”

Sister Hermana would have none of it.

“What word?”

I kinda wanted to see if my dad would actually say it. But instead, he asked for a sheet of paper and a pen, and he wrote it out – those four horrid letters, f,u,c,k.

Then he slipped it back to her on her desk. Sister Herman turned ashen with shame and fired up with fury, all in one fell swoop. It must have been her super nun powers.

“WHERE did you see this, Carl?!”

“In the bathroom,” I replied.

“Not in MY bathroom!” she shrieked.

“No, not yours! The boys room!” I whined. I didn’t realize she meant none of the bathrooms under her supervision, which would include the boys’ room.
But about five seconds later, we were marching down the hallway as fast as we could towards the 1st through 4th graders’ boys’ room. Sister knocked furiously to make sure it was empty, then poked her head in and drove a lone fearful kid out.

Finally, it was time to show the evidence. I was so nervous, I actually wondered, what would happen if it wasn’t there? Did I just invent where I saw it, to cover my tracks when my dad asked? Was I a pathological liar?

Thankfully for me, the word WAS there, carved high up near the top door jamb of a toilet stall. I pointed at it fearfully, wondering what would happen next.

What did happen next was that my dad again cried a little, because he didn’t quite understand that this was a normal thing to see in our often coarse and callous American culture. But he put his arm around my shoulder to let me know that he didn’t blame me for saying it anymore, and we walked to the car while Sister Hermana frantically called Jewel, the school janitor, to paint over the bathroom stall, right that instant.

I don’t know what Jewel had to say about that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he muttered a certain word as she walked away.

“Fuck!”

THE TIME I ALMOST SNEEZED ON THE BACK OF MICHAEL JORDAN"S HEAD (aka I"m Lucky to Be Alive to Write This)

Today's a busy one, but I want to post at least a couple times a week, so here's a quick memory I'm sharing that is about what nearly became the greatest tragedy of my journalistic career.

HERE GOES:
So, the time was fall '99, Christmas season to be exact. I was a fall quarterly paid intern for the Chicago Tribune, the first weekly newspaper person ever to be picked up by the Tribune, or so I was told. It was a thrill and an honor to work for the paper i most loved in the world.

But I got sent on all sorts of random assignments, and one of them was to watch Michael Jordan show up at the Boys & Girls Club he'd named in his late father's honor and hand out thousands of Christmas presents to hundreds of needy kids. Afterwards, we in the press would be blessed with the privilege of throwing some questions his way.

At the time, Jordan was the most popular man on the planet. Or at least, definitely in Chicago. I had never been in the room as a reporter with anyone this famous, knowing that my take on it all would be THE definitive story people could read. I was nervous, but I grabbed my mini tape recorder and got my place in front of the man, the myth, the legend.

That is, i had a place until the TV cameras barged in, at which i point i was literally ordered to move. I wound up getting pushed and jostled around to the back of Jordan, leaving me no option but to swing my arm around his head from behind and hold the tape recorder just under his mouth.

Let's just say Jordan is a "low talker," or at least he was that day. Mushmouth from "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" was Winston Churchill next to Jordan. This surprised the hell out of me.

Anyway, I'm standing and straining for my tape recorder to pick up whatever it can. And the other, far more veteran reporters were starting to notice my tippy-toes act and trying not to snicker. If I fell one step wrong, i'd either fall smack into Jordan or away from him, choking him, maybe both. And again, we were being filmed for the TV news.

Just then, things got worse. I had just been getting over a horrible cold, my nose building up an itchy sensation over and over before releasing visible globs of goo anytime i sneezed. It was allergy season for me...And I knew something was about to make me sneeze.

Ya know how, if you are trying to prevent a sneeze you start twitching your face and blinking your eyebrows? This was worse, much worse. I had to twist my face muscles into pretzels in order to hold it in as The Greatest Athlete Ever kept mumbling. And the other reporters were starting to notice and trying not to laugh.

That only made me feel worse, and more nervous. And of course the more you think about something happening, the more likely it is that it's going to happen. On top of that, I'm convinced that I'm God's personal court jester, the one human being that He most enjoys watching crazy shit happen to.

So i know that i won't be able to hold it for ten seconds more. With 5 seconds to spare, Michael finally shut up and I whipped my microphone out of his face and proceeded to double over with the LOUDEST SNEEZE EVER. My nose shot out clear sticky goop at rocket speed straight into the floor. Everyone saw it.

Including Michael.

I was mortified.

He was pissed.

Thank God he had an image to maintain. As everyone else backed away in disgusted horror or grossed-out giggles, Jordan shot me a look that I don't think he ever gave to any other member of the public, at least. It was a look that wanted to kill me. And then he turned and walked away, leaving me as the source of gossip that day for the entire Chicago press corps as i found a paper towel and proceeded to mop up my mess.

And to think I didn't get picked up by the Trib after my fall session was over. Hmmm, wonder why.

KILLER COMEDY (I read this essay last night at a show in LA and got the most insane reaction of my ten-year career. Enjoy...)

Let me begin by saying every word of the following story is true. Only the name of the other guy has been changed, and that’s not to protect his innocence, but rather to protect my life. You’ll see why soon enough.

(MY TRADEMARK SHOULD BE STARTING WITH “SO”) So it all started Sunday night. I was at the Comedy Store, waiting to see if I made the list to be on the night’s open mike show. It was there that I met Kelly, another comic, way younger than me, but with the unjaded eagerness that I once had way too many Hollywood days ago.

We started talking about comedy and the scene, where to perform and when, how and why. Soon enough, we found we both had been left off the list. So I asked him if he knew another place to perform that night, and he invited me to come along to an open mike at a place called Rusty’s Surf Shack out on Santa Monica Pier. I love the ocean, really love the Pier, and was jonesing to perform. So I went. He seemed innocent enough, and had an SUV while I was dependent on a series of buses to get anywhere. I hopped in, thinking ‘no problem!’

Well, about two minutes into our drive, Kelly has something to tell me.

“Don’t take this wrong. You seem like a nice guy, but if you hurt me, I will kill you.”

“What?!” I gasped.

“I’m a sociopath. I’m being treated for it because I almost became a serial killer. My dad would want me to tell you that.”

Right about now, I’m thinking that this has GOT to be a setup for a reality show. There had to be a hidden camera in this car and Ashton Kutcher waiting in a control booth in the back of a van somewhere on Sunset, waiting to give Kelly the sign to tell me I’d been “Punk’d.” But after five seconds or so of silence, nothing happened. And I started to think “Holy shit, this guy’s for real.”

So I asked him “Why” his dad would want him to make that kind of comment to a stranger.
“To get that out there.” He was quiet, eyes focused on the road, but still appeared a bit nervous. But hell, I was the one who needed to be nervous!

“So…” I asked him, “You mean, you’ve KILLED someone?”

“No, but I’ve thought about it. Thank God for therapy.”

Right about now, I’m realizing this guy’s for real and I’m assessing my options. No, actually, I’m thinking to myself “You are so EFFing stupid! You just stumbled your way into getting picked up by a GUY in West Hollywood! But instead of being gay (or so I HOPED) he’s a killer!”

I asked him if I should get out of the car. He replied calmly, LIKE THE KIND OF COLD-BLOODED, STONE-FACED KILLER YOU SEE IN A HITCHCOCK MOVIE OR, SAY, HANNIBAL LECTER – “Do you want to get out of the car?”

Now talk about the most loaded question of all time. If I say “Yes! Let me out now!” would that piss him off and make him want to kill me in utter defiance of my wishes? Or should I stay, acknowledging both my pathetic need for a ride to Santa Monica and trying to be supportive and friendly of this young guy’s efforts to fix his urges in therapy. Surely even prospective serial killers need friends, right? And just like I wouldn’t want to be racist or homophobic, I certainly wouldn’t want to be killer-phobic either.

So I stay in. I do make one vow to myself: I’m getting a car as soon as freakin’ possible.

But for now, I’m here, stuck in an SUV with a teenage comedian who’s prone to fits of homicidal rage. And I’m always too curious for my own good. I’m drawn to weirdness and weird people, and though I’m scared to walk in the fire myself, I’m more than willing to watch or ask about what it’s like.

“Actually, can I ASK you about it?” I ask.

“About what?” he replies. Oh, I don’t know. The weather. Hollywood. The stock market. What the hell was he THINKING I wanted to ask him about?! Killing! Oh, wait, calm down, I don’t want to be sarcastic and enrage him. THAT would be a shame – to have a perfectly nice conversation going with a sociopath and THEN piss him off with a joke, of all things.

“Um, who do you want to kill? I’m not your type or anything, am I?”
There’s a question I never expected to ask a guy. Especially one I just met in West Hollywood.

“And besides, you’re not my type.”

I have never been so happy to be rejected in my entire life. Yet I ask him what IS his type for killing?

“Gangbangers.”

Now, this kid is WHITEBREAD and driving an SUV. He still lives at home and has his parents supervising his incredible regimen of psychological therapy, and he admits to me that he lives in Manhattan Beach.

“Dude, you live in Manhattan Beach. No offense, but have you even MET a gangbanger before?”

He pauses…”No. I guess that’s why I haven’t killed anyone yet. The people I think about killing don’t live anywhere near me.”

And besides, since most gangbangers are black and Latino, does that make you a racist? I ask. Is it about that?

“No,” he replies. “I’d kill the heads of Enron too. Basically, anyone of any type who destroys people’s lives and doesn’t even care about it. It’s sort of a vigilante thing.”

“You ever watch ‘Dexter’?” I ask, referring to the R-rated cable show that follows the exploits of a vigilante serial killer.

“No, my parents won’t let me.”
Amazing! This guy has the capacity to KILL people, but he still worries about what his parents think is appropriate television programming!

“How old ARE you?!” I ask.

“19.” He looks 25, easy.

So we get into Rusty’s Surf Shack, grab a table and wait for the open mike to start. It’s at this time I ask him how he got into comedy.

“Come on, man. It’s substitute behavior. Where else do you get to kill strangers every night? And that’s the whole GOAL!”

Just then, I KID YOU NOT, the old song “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads starts playing on the Surf Shack’s sound system. I don’t point this out to him. No need to accentuate the moment.

Besides, he’s excitedly telling me about his job now.

“I just got hired as a sushi chef. I’m working with Ginsu knives.” He says this with relish. I nearly spit out my drink.

“They give you knives and teach you how to use them,” he adds.
“So it’s not just a job then. It’s practice, in a way…” I say, joking darkly.

“I know.” He replies, a little too excitedly.

About this time I notice the sweatshirt he’s wearing. It says “Psych Ward.” And has a serial number on it. It was designed as a joke, and for most people it is. But Kelly helpfully points out, “Oh, I’ve been there, dude. UCLA. Three different times.”

There’s still time to kill before the show – no pun intended. I decide to scare him in return.

“I’d like to talk to you about my faith.”

“Oh, you a Jesus freak?”

“No. I’m a Scientologist.”

“You are?!” he says. Now HE looks nervous. Leave it to Scientology to be the religion that freaks out serial killers.

“No, not really,” I say. “I’m Catholic.”

“Then I’m sorry about your childhood,” he jokes.

Wait a minute. YOU’RE the killer, I’m thinking. What happened in YOUR childhood? But I’m, again, afraid to ask, instead soaking in the irony of a serial killer and a Christian sharing the same table. Which is scarier?

I tell him I admitted to my faith because I have trust in God that I’ll be OK and that he won’t let me get hurt.

“”Isn’t that the way it always works?” he replied. “Trust God, then bam! A hurricane comes along, or a car accident and bam! They’re just as dead as the rest of us,” he says.

Dark but true. I admit I have no reply to offer.

“I’m just sayin,’” he says.

So he went on that night and indeed killed. From the stage. And thankfully, so did I. We were a regular team, only I was afraid he’d try to take it further and make me his accomplice, like we were the two weirdos in “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.”

I thought, maybe I can be his friend at the open mikes, see him ‘round the scene. But I’m not gonna get in his car again.

Then I realize it’s almost midnight. It’s gonna be a bitch getting home on the bus. Guess who I hitched a ride back to Hollywood with?

He dropped me off at a bus stop on Sunset near La Cienega.

I turned to say thanks. He said he had to hurry home ‘cause of curfew.

“Oh, strict parents?”

“No. Legally enforced. The state wants to know where I am after midnight.”

EIGHT MINUTES WITH LEWIS BLACK

For those who don't know, I've interviewed dozens of comedians in my years as a reporter. You can find the profiles in my "Famous and Funny People" blog section on my site, www.americasfunniestreporter.com. This interview was with Lewis Black at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, CA on Friday, June 20, 2008 after he did a hilarious Q&A with the audience at a book signing for his new collection of essays, "Me of Little Faith." This interview hasn't appeared anywhere but here so enjoy...


America's Funniest Reporter: Nobody seems as crazy as they did in the Bush elections about religion, but the fringe keeps saying that Obama’s a Muslim. So how do you feel religion is playing out in this election? Is it a factor?

BLACK: I think it’s playing out a little less, but it just gets stupid. It’s playing out stupid. Before it was idiotic and now we’ve moved to stupid. They say Obama is a Muslim because they can’t say bad things. They can’t use the other words they’d like to say, so they come up with that as the excuse.

AFR: Do you think we’re moving past this permanently?

BLACK: Yeah, I think so. I think most Americans are tired of it. Once you have a president who says he’s religious, but people see he’s just insane, they pick up on it. I think people are sick of it. You see it even with the born-agains, saying these people have got to just stop it. I think it’s the end of it. And a lot of that outpouring had to do with 9/11. That’s how people respond when the shit hits the fan.

AFR: Do you think that when things calmed down and saw more trouble wasn’t coming they backed off from it?

BLACK: Yeah, I think so and they’re sick of it. Look – you can be on your hands and knees all you want but you gotta know how to fix things. Look there’s a flood now in the Midwest and they’re still putting up sandbags. No amount of prayer, you can pray whatever, but we ended up in the position where they didn’t do the basics. Look that was in ’93 that the place flooded. They were told in ’93 to build a larger embankment, and they didn’t. We have to start doing things when they do something and go, yeah now we gotta get it done.

AFR: So this is a problem that goes across other administrations.

BLACK: It goes across all of ‘em. This country’s never dealt with its problems, always fooling around with other crap.

AFR: Some people act like Obama is the Messiah. What is your reaction to that?

BLACK: I think the kids are reacting to something they’ve never heard, which is hope.

AFR: Do you have faith in him?

BLACK: I don’t have that much faith anymore. Hope is a great thing if you’re 22. I’m 60. Hope’s not that big a deal. Hope to me is that the hotel I stay in will have a breakfast buffet tomorrow. That would be nice. I think what he’s doing is great. I think what’s really amazing is that people go “God he speaks so well.” Like there’s something wrong with that. How do we know he can do anything? Well if he can speak that way he can focus people. That’s the important thing. Whether he gets anything done with the idiots wandering around is another thing. I don’t think it’s that difficult. It’s just here’s what the liberals think, here’s what the conservatives think, let’s meet in the middle and move on. Something’s gotta give.

AFR: Gay marriage is fresh in the news, and All Saints Church here is the most liberal church in America and has said they'll crank out gay weddings as fast as they get asked. So how do you think gay marriage will play out in relation to faith? Are people chilling out about it?

BLACK: In a sense it’s – it’s a hell of a thing to compare it to, but abortion. States allowed abortion, and eventually it became the law of the land. It’ll take a number of years because it has to do with ignorance. If people don’t spend time with gay people, they don’t get it. It’s a concept and a concept that weirds them the shit out. All you have to do is get out in the country 20 minutes to see that they’re not exposed to it. Compare this to parts of the country, it’s like 10 years ahead out here. They just got cable!

AFR: Has there been any presidential candidate ever that didn’t let you down?

BLACK: No! No, not really. Look all that had to happen, all my generation had to do was legalize pot and they couldn’t do it. It’s that simple. I mean really, that was it. They couldn’t even do the basics. I was reading an article by a friend of mine today. Hemp can’t be grown in this country. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Not even cannabis – hemp! It’s a law that’s 40, 50, 60 years old

AFR: What do you want to be doing next?

BLACK: Next? Lying down.

AFR: No, your next big project?

BLACK: I do the show, it goes back on the air July 30. I go back on tour, the CD comes out August 5 and then I do a run in New York but after that I don’t know. I may do a movie this summer but it doesn’t look like it.

STILL MORE STUPID AMERICANS (I really don't hate my country, just morons like these - people in concession line at movie theaters)

So tonight i went to see "Batman:The Dark Knight" in IMAX at Universal Studios Citywalk in an advance critics' screening. It's a cool place to see it and we're 4 days early, which is pretty badass.

But then i get there and after navigating a line that's a mile long, i finally have a secure place in line and feel I can run for snacks. So I run, which for me is a feat. (See my photos section if you have questions about that.)

But once I get in line, there's like two teenagers running the stand for about 20 customers, who are all hoping to hustle and make their movie in time. So we're talking SLOOOOOOW service. But it's moving. Until the two Latino guys in front of me step up to order.

Normally, I post color-blindly, not drawing attention to someone's race. But in this case, you'll see my point.

These guys start stammering through their order. It's a given in Southern California that at least one side of any exchange in a customer service line will not be in English - either the customer or the employee, or when you're REALLY in a hurry and trapped behind them, BOTH, will not speak the language of the country they're LIVING in. And yes, I CAN talk smack and pass judgment because my dad came here from Poland, where the language is really different from English rather than sharing half the words or barely changing the spelling, and HE took the time to learn the language out of respect for the system that he CHOSE to move to.

So as they look at the menu screen as if they've never been to a movie theater in their life (again, this kind of crap only happens when you're about to be late for the hottest movie of the year). Not to mention they had ten minutes in line behind the morons in front of THEM to decide what they wanted. But nope, they're consulting each other now before asking the clueless cashier if Coke is available there as a drink.

Ya think?!? I wonder if Coke is in a movie theater. Hmmmm.

So just as they're about to get it over with, BAM! Here comes either their buddy or cousin or friend, another guy who can't speak the language despite being here long enough in this country to have spawned the apparent 8 and 10 year old kids that are with him.

And whadaya know? They invoke the Unspoken Family Rule of Linecutting: If you've got a family member in a line - the bigger the better, of course, because the whole POINT is to piss off as many people as you can, right? - then BY ALL MEANS step right up and join them the SECOND they manage to be at the front of the line. Skip the wait of the people behind you, and make sure you order as much as possible for every last little rugrat in your family.

Ah, yes, another scintillating five minutes go by as I fantasize about the fact that I'LL be fast and set a new trend in motion. But while i just want a large popcorn and a Coke/Hi-C fruit punch suicide combo drink, i have to hear these pinheads discuss "How you say?...." "You know, this....ah, yes, size of drink." Please save the English language discussion for a CLASS that will ultimately answer all your questions faster any way.

Now that she's got your order, wait, she's gotta now hear your kids change their minds five different ways. "Red slushie!" "No, blue slushie!" "Large!" "No, small!" And the poor girl behind the counter is totaling them up, switching them around and....

Well, that's the point I think "Why am i about to spend $6.75 more for a bag of popcorn that really took 12 cents to produce?" and storm off back to my place in line JUST in time to get in the theater.

Oh well. I'm on a diet anyway.

A QUICK COMPLAINT ABOUT MORE STUPID AMERICANS (Not a bash on America, but on the people that likely resulted in Bush being President twice)

The longest line I've ever seen to see a celebrity appearance was outside a Borders at Sunset & Vine in Hollywood. It was around the time Bill Clinton came out with his second book, "Giving," so I thought perhaps people were there to see him or some other President? Perhaps the Pope?

No, they were there to see Dog The Bounty Hunter!!!

And even more upsetting - he had a book!! These people had come to see this human Gremlin claim that he knew how to construct a sentence, and then another and another until somehow he managed to produce a book.

If THIS didn't prove the legend of the Hundred Monkeys - that if a hundred monkeys of normal stupid intelligence typed forever, eventually one might miraculously produce something readable - I don't know what does. The guy looks like the monster from "Predator", only he's also wearing Paris Hilton's brand of hair extensions - and his job consists of capturing the dumbest white trash America has to offer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the morons in the crowd were people on his "git" list!

I can imagine that thought process: "Sure he might catch me if I git my book signed, but he's FAMOUS!"

Now, I have a fundamental question:

Before you get a book contract, shouldn't you be required to have an audience that KNOWS how to READ?!

Dog's fans all looked like they were lost inside the store - because I don't think they'd ever SEEN a book before. And they actually acted surprised when he walked in peacefully, rather than kickin down the door or breaking through the wall like the Kool Aid Man.

But to be surprised when he "turned out" to be racist? Sorry, look at him - he's King of the Racists!

You don't "accidentally" say the "N" word. At least guys who dress like that don't.

WHY I CAN NOW UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF MASS MURDER (or, thoughts on the douchebag morons who line up to buy IPhones)

(This came from my raw thoughts in my new Spider-Man comedy journal...[look, i won that at a Nerds in Love event in Chicago last month, so b*** me]. And it has plenty of fake F words in it...So if you can't handle that so be it today. It's a rarity. But I DESPISE people who line up for IPhones and crap like that. Here goes...)

So another I Phone came out today, and I'm ENRAGED! I understand the mindset of mass murderers on days like this, when we see firsthand, before our very eyes in broad daylight, just how f***ing stupid and lost we are as a society.

Why do I care so much?!

Ask THEM why do THEY care about a stupid f***ing phone?! It's JUST A PHONE!

But no, they say, it's not just a phone. "It's got email and you can watch movies and..." well, who knows what the f*** else. Everything you need to keep from looking in the mirror, searching your soul, or reading the f***ing news.

It's an election year, people! We are about to elect a man with 2 years of relevant experience to be the leader of the free world! You can't get hired to manage a CIRCUIT CITY without FIVE years of relevant experience! Obama for President? Yeah, great f***ing idea!

If he wasn't black, he wouldn't be anywhere NEAR the presidency. I'm glad we've progressed in the last 40 years, and I'm sure I'd vote for a black guy with credentials. But his time we're DOING what Chris Rock himself warned about in 1996 with Colin Powell: blindly making up for centures of injustice because one guy "speaks so well."

But I digress.

The reason I HATE these people, why there's not enough bullets to fill them with , is that they're lining up for something where the price is gonna drop in 2 weeks and will be outright replaced in 6 months. This is the THIRD edition of it in less than 18 months! Anything else, you'd demand a refund or stop buying new ones because you've been had! But if you had any sense, you don't buy a new one - you demand a refund.

Why DO they have 3 versions of the IPhone already? Do you REALLY believe that it just keeps magically improving? Yeah right - and they didn't know from the get-go with the first one that they could afford to have a $200 price cut. That bait-and-switch ALONE should have had every Mac store in the nation up in flames.

But no, THESE people - our fellow citizens, who are sucking off our oxygen supply and providing nothing but carbon dioxide to this world in return - line up early and wait wall night and all day NOT EVEN NOTICING that the a**holes in charge from the Mac store are offering them bottled water but asking them to pay for it! We'll take $600 for a phone but we at Apple can't spare being paid a dollar for water!

Why am I so mad? Because I know that while things like the IPhone are dumbing us down and numbing us out, REAL brainpower is going into it! Excuse me, isn't anyone else outraged by the fact that we've had AIDS around for 25 years without a SINGLE cure, yet we're on version 3 of this s*** already?!

It should be the LAW that EVERY SCIENTIFIC MIND in the country is put to work on curing diseases and solving the energy crisis and off the quest for a better telephone. We HAVE TV, folks, and radio, and DVD players, better movies than anyplace on the planet, but we DON"T have our priorities straight.

And for that, I sign off by saying you can waste your life squinting into the little picture on your IPhone, but I'LL keep MY eyes on the big picture.