The blog entry to end all blog entries! Part II

Grooming is a situational activity. I participate in varying amounts of self-maint-enance (external) everyday, and somedays, like the days where I play Madden all day long, that means no grooming at all. When more major events come along, like dates or auditions for Last Comic Standing, I do a full upkeep. I break out the razors, tweezers, loofahs, power washer, and turpentine. When you are getting detailed, you learn a lot about yourself, and I'm not going to qualify that statement as purely physical. Your mental makeup has a direct relation to your physical appearance. This means that somewhere in the recesses of my mind there is a part of me that is oblivious to things that normally should be noticed more quickly, things that should be corralled, things that should be contained, specifically things that should be tweezed. Oh yes, whilst performing a full body inspection I found an anomaly that my conscious self cannot allow, something that shook the foundations of my vanity, something that made me question the very direction of my life! I found a rogue hair growing out of the top of my ear.



That sucker was over a half inch! How long had it been there? It surely didn't just pop out over night! Have people been secretly referring to me as Hairy Ears? Or just Harold? Needless to say, this was a pretty disturbing moment. Evolutionarily speaking, how could this giant hair on the top of my ear ever benefit me? Warmth? Wind protection? Help in finding a mate outside my species? What am I? A Hobbit?? It had to go and was immediately plucked. Since this moment, I have been making routine inspections of the tops of my ears. There are some tiny hairs there, but nothing out of the ordinary. I feel like they are waiting for me to let my guard down. Someday, not too far off in the future, I may wake up to find my entire head wrapped in a cocoon of ear hair from which my cranium will emerge in a couple weeks with giant ear wings with which I will fly off to the Isle of Misfit Boys and live the rest of my days in freakish splendor.

I arrived at the comedy club for the Last Comic Standing auditions a little after 3am on the day of the auditions. It was cold. This is Minnesota, remember. It was f'ing fucking cold. And windy. F'ing fucking windy. And cold. When I got there, a few people were sleeping in sleeping bags, but the line was not very long. I counted about thirty people. I froze at the end of the line for about twenty minutes when I realized that the line wasn't getting any longer. I could go sit in my warm car and wait for more people to arrive before jumping back in line, which I did. At about 5:30, more comics began to show up, so I got back in line in the exact spot I was in before.

After freezing for a couple more hours, someone in line near me asks, "Did you sign the list?" List? What list? There's a list? Whose list? There is no one from the show here with a list. I ran to the front of the line where there was a comic with his own makeshift list. This jackass starts off by telling me that everyone is honoring the list and then proceeds to sign me in...as number 154! There weren't even fifty people in line! This isn't even an official list! The guy with the list was number four! I was pissed. Instantly fumingly enraged. Apparently, the local comics at this club had been signing up their friends and whoever else, and these hacks all went home and slept all night while a few of them stayed in line. "This guy's been here for two days," the comic says as he points to a dude in a sleeping bag who gives me thumbs up. "Two days?" I ask. "You better be fucking funny." And I'm certain he wasn't. None of them were.

No one in that line made me laugh all day. 99% of that crowd didn't even have more than three minutes of material. How were they expecting to even do the show without material? Jerry Seinfeld wants to know who are these people! So, I didn't get to audition. I got windburn, sunburn, and lost a nipple, but I did not get the pleasure of having Ant (pictured) tell me I'm not funny. I did however get to do some jokes for a couple reporters from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which you can see right here. I'm the guy at the beginning and end. Oh, and please notice that I'm wearing every article of clothing that I own, because MINNESOTA IS A GLACIER.

Pictures!

Well, Minneapolis wasn't the last stop for Last Comic Standing auditions. They were going to San Antonio in a couple days and Tempe in a week. I realized that Tempe was on the way to Los Angeles, and I was planning on moving back in a couple weeks anyway. Why not move my trip forward a little bit and stop in Tempe for the audition on the way? That's a great idea! Let's do that! Check back for Part III where I say goodbye to Indiana and hello to a tightly packed Nissan Sentra.