My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

photo posted from my iPhone

Digital image of my thumb, to be sent to Sacramento to see if I’m gonna turn into a suspect in any crimes. It’s part of obtaining a business license in the City of San Francisco. No way around it. “It’s a police state,” I say to the gentleman rolling my finger over the glass lens. He squirts water from a bottle to help the pattern in the fingertip pronounce. “Yes it is. It’s a police country.” He doesn’t seem to care either way. He speaks with an Indian accent, I’m tempted to ask if he’s Gujrati, like my friend Chiraag’s parents. I decide that is irrelevant.

“There’s no problem with my real name,” I hear a woman saying to the officer we’ve all talked to at window 10. He routes everyone through to the proper channel in the Police department. “Is that because when you get arrested you don’t give your real name?” he asks. “Yes,” she answers. The man laughs. He is built like an off duty cop, I wonder if he got busted to this paperwork nightmare for beating someone important up in a holding tank. He was doing a crossword when I came up to the window. He wasn’t thrilled to see me.

I had just come from another office where I put out my index finger, dipped it in ink and stamped it on a piece of paper.

“Take this paper down the hall, turn right and take a number. They’re gonna fingerprint you there.”

I needed to be fingerprinted to be fingerprinted. “Is this ink on my fingertip gonna mess up the scanner?” I ask the grey mustached Indian man. “Not a problem,” he answered.

I go before a board for a hearing in a few weeks, and they will decide if I am qualified to be licensed by The City to haul junk. If so, then I am issued a metal badge. Basically I’m deputized as an independent garbage man. Then it’s on.

photo posted from my iPhone

It’s a twofer, mother’s day and my dad’s birthday on the same day!

photo posted from my iPhone

Sterling Says is an odd name for a band. Doug’s in it. He got us together to shoot a video for their song “Sausalito”. I ride a bike pulling a cart with Owen sitting on it shooting video of the band riding bikes in a carefree manner across the Golden Gate Bridge.

That sentence was awful.

Look for the final cut here in a few weeks.

Here’s the transcript of my first stand up comedy routine, done with Doug Tuesday at Amnesia.

“This is my first time doing stand up comedy and I’m not here because I’m funny. I’m not funny. I look like Jeff Foxworthy and my girl has fantasies about him.

So I’m up here for her. Thinking how to be funny. Riffing is funny. I can riff on shit. Like a diamond commercial I heard the other day, the guy says in his diamond commercial voice, ‘Diamonds. The gift that lasts forever.’

So I’m like “Ice cream. The gift that lasts an hour in the hot sun.”

That’s riffing.

‘Diarrhea. The gift that kills children in the 3rd World.’

So my riffs need work. How about, ‘Rape. The gift that gives an unexpected life.’

Rape is not a gift. But life is a precious gift from God.

Why does comedy get so dark? Why do we laugh at pain? I don’t get it. They say women can tolerate pain more than men. They have a higher pain threshold. So why can’t I hit them?

Ok, that’s another way to be funny. Bash women. And I have a lot of Black jokes. But I only tell them to Black folks. Gonna save that for another time.

So I can riff, I can be misogynistic, tell racial jokes, what else is there? I don’t think I want to be a part of all that. I don’t want to be a stand up comic. I wanna do stand up dramedy. Or a stand up buddy flick. You know what I really wanna do? Stand up tragedy.

Here’s a tragic story. It’s true and its about suicide so don’t laugh. It’s not funny. I was driving to Marin, across the Golden Gate bridge, and I’m on Lombard and traffic is basically stopped on the on ramp. So I take a left and sneak throught he Presidio and you come out right at the toll booth. Traffic is barely moving. I get halfway across the span and there’s yellow tape across the pedestrian way and a bunch of cops are there and telling people to turn around and walk back. Then I see the guy, on the wrong side of the barrier, hugging the cement post with his hands, ready to kill himself. A cop is standing there talking to him, close enough to just reach out and touch him, probably saying, ‘Come over the fence and let’s talk about what’s wrong.’

The jumper was just shaking his head No, No, a hopeless look in his eye.

So what could you say to someone in that position? BOO! (I screamed BOO to scare everyone, then mimicked a guy throwing up his hand in surprise, then wheeled my arms around like I was falling backwards off something very tall.)

A police officer should never say Boo to a potential jumper.

And that’s my routine. Thanks.

photo posted from my iPhone

photo posted from my iPhone

There’s an undeveloped strip of crumbling docks with abandoned sheds built right on the edge of the bay. The new
biotech community has built it’s glass boxes just across the street.

photo posted from my iPhone
Sea wall. Aisle 9.