The cabin was only about 20 feet by 20 feet, a studio cabin, if you will. Thank God I brought a small camera, because I had no one and no thing to talk to all weekend. The dog would growl at me if I came within 10 feet. So I sat and contemplated the many messages on the four walls. There were at least six on each wall. I took pictures of them with my camera.

This is where the messages took a turn for the philosophical.

I can’t argue with that. But the messages got more and more “inspirational” in nature.

Each ensuing message put me to mind of my own saying,
my own Shraxim, as I call them.

“True indifference is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

“I am married to my own bitterness.”

“Inevitably every place I live, every job I have, everything I touch seems like junk to me because I am in it, and I am worthless junk.”

“I am amazed how many of my friends have told me they are waiting for their parents to die before they commit suicide.”

“The whole problem with me is that no one ever had the courage to say to me, ‘You know, why don’t you shut up?’ They laughed instead, relieved the harangues were directed at someone else — secretly afraid they would be next. Like the ordinary Germans who let the Holocaust happen.”

“I consider what is done against me by one person to be done against me by all people, so it doesn’t matter who gets punished.”

“Eat as if you have never been fat, love as if you were never dumped for someone better looking and younger than you, have sex as if you were never abused, kill and steal as if there were no Hell, speak  as if there were such a thing as human connection.”

“There don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do all the things I wish I didn’t have to do.”

“Smiling only makes it easier for people to hit their target when they kick you in the teeth.”

“When you have everything you need in life, you get the feeling you don’t have anything you need in life.”

“Given the alternatives, you may as well believe in Heaven.”

“Dying is scary because you understand that everyone and everything you know is going to go away.”

“Gay couples don’t last long because Nature does nothing to bind them together.”

“Nobody just gives you anything. You have to dig everything out super painfully like they used to dig bullets out with knives in the Wild West.”

“Suffer in silence.”

“The minute you stop looking, that is when you will find the love of your life.” Don’t make me laugh. I completely gave up — like, in my heart of hearts I know it’s over for me — months and months ago and nothing has happened in my love life since, and I’ve got no leads for the foreseeable future.

“Money can’t buy happiness.” <—Well-known lie. So absurd that no comment is required.

“Getting there is half the fun.” Actually, getting there means: Missed trains, lost luggage, smelly and/or loud people next to you on the bus, forgotten bottle of heart medicine, expensive tickets, long layovers, delayed flights, plane crashes, hijackings, train crashes and/or heists, car crashes, all of them potentially fatal.

“Breaking up is hard to do.” No it’s not. You just text ’em and say, “U R not my BF/GF anymore.” Easy.

“The customer is always right.” Not so in: Philadelphia; Eastern Europe; any DMV or Post Office; the great, now-defunct Cafe Riche in D.C. (where the owner, who wore a turban made of a kitchen towel, would throw you out if he didn’t like how you looked), the list goes on and on.

“A stranger’s just a friend you’ve never met.” What?! This one is just morally reprehensible. Strangers are dirty; they’re not like us. That is why they are dangerous. Just ask all the people who’ve been murdered (or worse) by strangers! Oops, they can’t talk anymore, because they talked to strangers, a.k.a. their “friends.”

“Only the good die young.” Tell that to Adolf Hitler, who died at the relatively young age of 56.

“Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” When Mark Twain originally said this, it was quite the bon mot. But that was about 100 years before global warming. Nowadays we can take an active part in the weather by burning lots of fossil fuels. Turns out cars will kill us all! Dead planet walking!

“It is what it is.” No, it’s not. It is something different. I don’t know who made up this empty tautology, but here’s what it is: Stupid and not worth saying.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What?

The most expensive home in America, the old Spelling place in Holmby Hills, CA (called The Manor) has “rooms just for gift-wrapping and just for silver and china display…” among many other special rooms. I guess everyone requires different facilities in their domicile. Some people really want an iMax theatre in their house. Some people like infinity pools.

Here are some of the special rooms I would need to make my Dreamhouse truly a Dreamhome. I will add to this list later if necessary.

1. Witch Costume Warehouse

2. Year-Round BBQ Tasting Centre (in backyard)

3. The [CORPORATE SPONSOR TBD]® Festival Stage & Pavilion (for my storytelling and musical performances only. Min. 20,000 seating capacity)

4. Exclusive All-Star Mausoleum and Memorial Gardens (by invitation only!)

5. Two-Car Garage (I need two cars, in case one of them breaks)

6. Separate Mud Room for Ghosts (leads off of ghost-only entrance)

7. Private Bourbon Distillery and Drinkery (staffed by the world’s top sour mash experts and bourbonierres)

8. Soundstage/Set Used as the Ricardos’ Apartment in I Love Lucy (replica is acceptable)

9. Real, Fully Functional 11th-Century Cathedral (French or Italian only; must be accessible from main house without having to go outdoors)

10. JCPenney (or equivalent-level department store, for emergency shopping needs)

11. Sparkling Clean and Scent-Free Polar Bear Habitat and Igloo Community (must be indoors; can be in the basement if necessary)

12. Egyptian-Style Mummification Atelier (local school classes can come learn)

13. Specialty Fudge-Making Kitchen (separate from the central and salad kitchens)

14. Ancient Roman-Style Dining Room with Toilets as Chairs (so you don’t have to leave, ever, you can keep eating)

15. Space-Age Butlers’ Hideaway and Lounge (think Barbarella for butlers)

16. Bicycle Repair Shop NOT Staffed by Assholes!

17. Courtroom

18. The House I Grew Up In (I want it incorporated — whole — into my Dreamhouse)

19. The SM Shrake Museum, Library and Historical Centre (pictures, ephemera; a celebration of my life!)

20. Filthy Gas Station Bathroom for Guests I Don’t Like

We’re gonna need about 1,500,000 square feet of space. Now, let’s get started. Tear down that b*tch of a basketball court, and put a g*ddamned Petting Zoo with Funny Chickens where it ought to be!

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

I’ve long had a personal beef to pick with the conventions of political cartoonistry. In a word, I think they’re stupid.

As it is in the homes of some mentally challenged people, in political cartoons everything is labeled, in big letters. That’s so you dummies can’t be confused about what is what, you know? It’s like the cartoonists’ illustration skills don’t take them all the way, they’re not good enough, so they have to slap big, obvious explanations all over everything.

And always in the most contrived, derivative forms: Some badly drawn fat guy is wearing a big sash that reads “THE GOVERNMENT” in block letters. Animals and other things all wear name tags (pigs/vultures/vampires are always wearing “IRS” sashes).

Turgid metaphors clunk around the frame with idiot-proof placards spelling out what they’re supposed to be, like the “UNITED STATES” ship in this old WWII cartoon, a primo example of what I’m talking about:

But what do you expect from the kissin’ cousin of other stupid, mega-literal, idiot-approved cartoons such as Marmaduke, The Lockhorns, Cathy, and Family Circle? It’s a congenitally insipid genre. It’s just ghastly and mind-deadening, calling up a cringe-inducing earlier era when people were … simpler. Like WTF is this? I hate to single this guy out, I’m sure he’s a very nice guy, but come on:

Which brings me to my own efforts when I was 8 years old. You tell me which one makes its point more smartly and elegantly. The two examples above, or this:

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

I’m talking about the weaving of big-name social networking sites into the plots on Law & Order (and its spinoffs such as Major Cases and Sexy Victims’ Units), made extra weird by the fake names the shows’ writers have come up with presumably to shield against legal action: The amusing “Facespace” (a kind of MySpace/Facebook hybrid) has recently changed to “Faceunion.” The same recent episode featured an iPhone app and website called “Anonymous Quickie” (obviously meant to stand in for Grindr, the GPS-based hookup tool that promiscuous gay future Sexy Victims use).* I’m waiting (on L&O or off) for an x-rated Facebook called Facef*ck.

Look, I don’t have a fancy writing degree from New York City’s prestigious Hudson University. And yet with my new storyblog I’ve had occasion to come up with some, dare I say, ingenious pseudonyms for many of the people, places, and things in my true stories. I went “à clé” to protect their identities, especially mobbed-up people I’ve known.

So I thought I’d quickly just try my hand at this, with some…

Pseudo-Names for Social Networking Sites:

• Foursquare: “Self-Stalker”
• MySpace: “FOXySpace”
• Meetup.com: “WeirdHobby.com”
• Plaxo: “NoThanxO”
• Friendster: “MeSoHornyMeLoveYouLongTimester”

More New Fake Names for Social Networking Sites, and Ideas for Plots Involving Them:

Flickr: “Pitchr”

Uniformed Officer: (bursting in to precinct, breathless) “That missing little girl in Far Rockaway… someone just tagged her in some vacation pictures on his Pitchr account! We gotta move on this!”

Lt. Van Buren: “Ugh, not again. I forgot my damn login for that site. I never use it anymore. Does anybody in here share photos with loved ones on Pitchr? Get over here and log in for us, will you? Goddamn websites are getting on my last nerve today.“

[OPENING CREDITS BEGIN, THEME MUSIC UNDER]

Twitter: “Pitter-Patter”

tweet: “patty-cake”

Det. Benson: “Captain, we’ve got a situation. A lady in the Bronx just patty-caked an S.O.S. to Pitter-Patter from her handheld! She is being attacked by a sex criminal. She asked her Pitter-Patter followers to contact SVU for her, and we’ve been getting dozens of frantic patty-cakes at @sexyvictims.”

Cap’n Cragen: “Followers? Is she a cult leader or something?”

Det. Benson: “No, but she is a top patty-caker. People hang on her every patty-cake. Excuse me, I have to go RP this post.”

Cap’n Cragen: (looking sadder than usual) “S.O.S. by SMS? Re-patty-caking? Liv, I don’t know if I can live in this world anymore. What ever happened to pens and papers?”

[OPENING CREDITS BEGIN, THEME MUSIC UNDER]

LinkedIn: “ChainedTogether”

Det. Eames: “So what are you telling us, professor? Somebody used ChainedTogether to find all their former colleagues from the bank where they worked, and then had bombs delivered to those people’s current places of employment? That’s just sick.”

Det. Goren: “I know. Whatever happened to just ‘going postal’ the old-fashioned way?”

Det. Eames: “Hey, remind me to go reject the ChainedTogether invitation Detective Munch over in SVU sent me last week. I don’t want to be chained up with him in any way, shape or form.”

Det. Goren: “You’re on ChainedTogether? So am I! Why haven’t we chained up yet?” (Det. Eames looks down at the floor.)

[OPENING CREDITS BEGIN, THEME MUSIC UNDER]

*I can’t remember what they were, but these shows have used other stand-in names for things like Craigslist and YouTube. Can anyone remember what they were?

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

Logical question: Do we let strangers hang out in our bathrooms at home while we’re in there? I don’t know about you, but I don’t. So why am I expected to share my private business with the world when I’m at the mall? Or work? There, it’s even worse because it’s not even strangers. How am I supposed to look at my boss in the eyes after hearing him going number two? How?

Until we as a society achieve individual-bathroom rights, here are 10 simple, easy-to-remember things to yell over the stall wall at other people to get them out of a public bathroom so you can have some privacy.

1. (Through megaphone) “You do not have permission to use this bathroom. YOU ARE TRESPASSING! GET OUT!”

2. “LOITERING IS ILLEGAL! I’m calling the police if you don’t get your DUMB M*THERF*CKING ASS OUT THIS BATHROOM!”

3. “Are they unloading a f*cking tour bus into this bathroom? Or a clown car, or what? ALL OF YOU GET OUT RIGHT NOW!”

4. “Hey! Are you some kind of a f*cking weirdo who likes to listen to the sounds of other people going B.M.? GET OUT OF HERE, WEIRDO!”

5. “Are you giving yourself a f*cking sponge bath in that sink? LEAVE!”

6. “How long is it going to take you to dry off your hands? I’ve seen old people f*ck faster than this! LEAVE NOW!”

7. “You look as good as you’re gonna look. MOVE AWAY FROM THE MIRROR AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

8. “Really? There’s five open stalls and you chose the one right next to the one someone’s using? Larry Craig, is that you? COME OUT! WAIT, I MEAN… GET OUT!”

9. “Hey, reading-on-the-toilet guy (/gal)! You’ve been in here long enough to write a f*cking book. GET OUT RIGHT NOW!”

10. “Oh my God! There’s a ‘dirty bomb’ about to go off in my stall! RUN FOR COVER!”

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

1. No boring status updates. Let’s use a positive example that my friend from South Carolina sent me, posted by a friend of his back home: “Tracy M is getting ready to go take one of my friends that was beaten by her ex boyfriend back to the doctor and to the Sheriff’s Department. 11m ago.” THAT is not a boring status update. Get the picture?

2. When tagging photos, practice the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you tag a picture where I look as fat and old as I actually am, I’m just gonna de-tag myself anyway, and for good measure I will find the worst picture I can of you and tag you in the middle of the night so it’s up there for several hours for your friends in different time zones to gawk at before you get to de-tag it.

3. If you are a stranger requesting to be friends with me, at least send me a Facemail^SMS (<- I made this word up. Pay up, Facebook) giving me some brief reason WHY you want to be friends. It can be very simple, like, “You’re hot.” Or it can be more involved, like, “Our mothers went to kindergarten together back in the old country, but they lost touch over the years and now I’ve found you on Facebook. Plus, you’re hot.” Just give me something to justify it.

4. Related: It’s not polite to ask someone flat out “Who are you?” because it could be that you’re forgetting someone you actually did know quite well at one time, and it will hurt their feelings. I’ve been on both ends of the question and it was not pretty.

5. Under no circumstances is it okay for you to put a picture of your kid up as your own profile picture. We know, you lost your own identity when you had a kid, but please, it’s embarrassing for everyone when you make it that plain. Feel free to put your kid’s pics in a clearly marked album like “My Spawn: The First 500 Pics” or something, so I have the option to ignore it.

6. Don’t think that you can become a writer through Facebook apps like “Note.” You are not a real writer for a reason: Because no one will publish you. Example: My ex-coworker who posted a Note called “Why Am I Such an A**hole?” in which she pondered aloud, for everyone to see, the reasons she considers most black people to be “n*ggers.” Letting everyone “publish” whatever they want online like this was not God’s plan for His children.

7. If you want to defriend someone, be an adult about it and cop to it when they eventually figure out they lost you. Don’t claim it was a technical glitch. Just admit you were drunk defriending^SMS or you just aren’t that into me. It’s okay. In the real world, people defriend.

8. When you receive an invitation to an event, and you can’t/don’t want to go, just don’t go. Or send the inviter a personal Facemail. Do not post a detailed description of your fabulous alternative plans on the Discussion Board of the event. “I’d love to come, but the love of my life and I are impulsively going on a last-minute weekend jaunt to Paris!!! Several of our celebrity friends are gonna throw a party there in our honor. See you when we get back?” STFU. No one cares what you are doing. Also, stop lying.

9. “Wall” means public-facing wall: In other words, everyone can see it (unless you close it off somehow, but you’re not smart enough to do that). Therefore, I would appreciate it if you save personal info such as my new phone number or questions like “Hey, Shrake! HOW ARE YOU? Is your bed still broken? LOL” for private Facemail. Thanks.

10. Is it asking too much for you to make your Event “secret” so those of us who are not invited can’t tell you’re having a party and didn’t invite us? The option is clearly marked when you build your Event.

11. Take some care when selecting people to invite to groups you’ve joined. Ask yourself whether Shrake really cares about a local school board candidate in Kansas, etc. WWSMSD? Would he join this group anyway if I didn’t suggest it? No? Do I want to waste valuable seconds of his time by inviting him?

12. Never invite me on to any of your lame apps, like “X has invited you to learn how to make the perfect smoothie!” Period. I will defriend your ass immediately with extreme prejudice.

13. Put your job title. Just do it. Like all of us, I am on the make, and I want to use the ’Book for more than social networking. You can be vague about exactly where you work, as I am, because a while back I was afraid of being assassinated at my workplace by rabid blog commenters. But at least list your job function, for heaven’s sake. Barista, sanitation engineer, party promoter… whatever it is you people do, no matter how dull, I still need to know.

14. Related: If you are a long-lost friend reconnecting with me through Facebook, please don’t ask, “So, whatcha been doing these last 15 years?” It’s all right there, in excruciating detail. With photos. So, check out my profile first, then ask targeted questions and I will try to answer them in the order in which they were received.

15. When you’ve met that special someone, or even if you’ve been with that special someone for 20 years, resist the urge to make it known through your Relationship Status. Because things change. And unless you know how to click the option for not announcing to the world “X is no longer listed as in a relationship” (is anything sadder?), you’re not only putting your business on the street, your face will appear on the Schadenfreude milk carton. They’re all gonna laugh at you.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

When I was a youngster, I would routinely encounter a word whose sound or appearance I liked, then during the course of a day I’d abide with itching anticipation for a chance to use it without ever checking what it meant. It was exhilarating to decide what words meant privately, without benefit of a dictionary. I checked them in the Shrake-tionary up here [points at temple] and that was satisfunctary.

Until one day! In about 1981, to be exact. Mrs. D. was driving me and three other prepubescent boys home from some after-school activity, possibly Forensics, possibly Webelos.

Mrs. D.: A waking daymare of suburbia, wound up so tight it squeaked when she moved her head, her maskface producing the mirthless “backward laugh” common to all the moms in the neighborhood, a staccato series of high-pitched wheezing inhalations.

I know all comparisons are inviduous, but in the interest of space, just picture Mary Tyler Moore’s character in that year’s hit movie Ordinary People (based on a novel written by Judith Guest, a native of my hometown) but with a style more like Velma’s from Scooby Doo.

I was in the back seat. In the front seat next to Mrs. D. was her daughter, A., who was slightly younger than us boys. Who knows why she was there. She was the pain-in-the-ass-in-waiting daughter her mother deserved.

So we turned onto Windemere Street, and were approaching Brett S.’s house, which was a mid-century (20th, that is) ranch with fanciful wooden slats on the façade. The slats were painted multiple bright colors for some reason. Brett’s dad was a coach, a tough guy who cried when he hugged his sons after a big game, whether they played in the game or not.

Salt of the subdivision types.

So as we’re rounding Windemere, and approaching the S.s’ house, Mrs. D.’s son goes, “Hey, Brett, what’s with the rainbow-colored boards on your house? It’s psychedelic!” Several passengers laughed.

The word “psychedelic” I didn’t know, but it sounded exotic, so… my perverted brand of Scorpio competitiveness kicked in and I searched my brainhouse for that word I was waiting for just the occasion to use.

Thinking fast, I popped out a new word I had seen in a People magazine review of the new Barbra Streisand/Gene Hackman movie All Night Long, in which she played (yet again) basically a prostitute. It was a word they used to describe her character.

“Yeah,” I added loudly and proudly. “Are you guys NYMPHOMANIACS or something?” There was no reaction for a second or two.

______

Mrs. D. did keep driving the car, but slowed it down. “What did you just say, young man?” (She really used those exact words. This was 20 years ago. People still talked like that.) “I asked if the S.s were nymphomaniacs. [Your son] asked if they were psychedelic, so…” Her head jerked back violently when I used the word again. Like the second bullet in Dallas. Things would never be the same on this car ride.

“Do you know what that word means?” she huffed, with real adult-to-adult anger, not proportionate for speaking to a 10-year-old child. Her daughter was tugging on her mother’s sleeve and bugging her to tell her what it meant. “LOOK IT UP IN THE DICTIONARY,” her mother snarled.

“I guess I assumed it was based on nymph, like forest nymph, like, they are floating around, painting their house different colors…” I offered, making a waving movement with my arms and picturing the beautiful Barbra Streisand in the movie All Night Long.

“Yeah. That’s not what it means.”

“Well, then I guess I don’t know what it means,” I admitted quietly. She lectured me in the sternmost way, “You shouldn’t go around using words when you don’t know what they mean.” Her underage daughter was still asking insistently what this funny word meant. I couldn’t wait to go look it up myself! I could’ve sworn it had something to do with fairies or nymphs.

“Sorry,” I whispered in an absent little voice, stiffened with dread at having gotten in trouble yet again — staring out the car window as the candy-colored slats of Brett’s house got closer and closer.

Mostly I felt sorry for myself, though. This was an outrage, the way this adult was bullying me, heavying up on me and embarrassing me in front of my friends just because she knew what psychedelic and nymphomaniac meant.

That station-wagon ride of mortification taught me: You are not one to go searching for words to use, you’ll only misappropriate them. It will be safer to make up your own words now. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

Didn’t the song “Bad Day” feel like a one-hit wonder (OHW) even when it was first popular on the radio? Couldn’t you feel it, as I, who am psychic, did?

I remember seeing Daniel Powter on GMA at the time the song came out, in 2006, and thinking right then and there that something wasn’t right. “The camera don’t lie,” indeed. He looked like the lovely Michael Stipe on a bad day: His skin pallor off, eyes dead/dying; the hat obviously intended to hide baldness, what else is he hiding, he looks like he learned his ABCs from the types of hepatitis, et cetera.

Worse, he seemed uncomfortable with his situation, like he just wanted to go back to Canada and score some horse and be a sensitive songwriter-busker, but some money men had ordained that he would have the hit single of the new century — wait, the new millennium! He was the Powter Keg and they were tappin’ that!

But I could just tell he was too weird to be a star (you can’t kid a kidder), and that the screaming girls outside Rockefeller Center were inwardly dismayed at the appearance of the guy behind the singing voice, but it was too late, the “Good Morning, America!” producers had shotguns, and they were digging them into the girls’ backs whispering for them to keep shrieking.

Then in recent months I had actually thought about Powter again, and wanted to ask someone (Gabe?) or something (wikipedia?): What Ever Happened to Daniel Powter? Clearly he had taken a powder (sorry), because there was no follow-up hit?

Then, in that way that the culture often answers my private thoughts, there he was again in the news, and the answer was what I divined it would be. I hadn’t missed the second big hit from Daniel Powter. I am not that out of touch. There wasn’t one. But I’m $ure he did alright on “Bad Day.”

More than just being a catchy ditty – OK, I bought it on iTunes! – and an OHW, “Bad Day” is kind of a fitting anthem for the Aughts or whatever this decade has been called. We Had a Bad Decade. We had a bad decade. We haaad a baaaaaad decaaaaade. Ay ya ya ya.

He Had a Good Decade

Then the next day you got news that Marshall “Slim Shady”/”M&Ms” Mathers, also a stone cold has-been as I write this, sold more records since 2000 than even the Beatles. He’s the top seller of this decade that has no acceptable name, much as he doesn’t.

Powter’s pre-“Bad Day” album was called “I’m Your Nelly” and his post-“Bad Day” album was called “Under the Gaydar.” Under it, indeed! I don’t know what sexuality he chooses. Let’s just say wikipedia has no section about his personal life. Let’s just say he doesn’t sing about how he loves girls. Let’s just say Eminem would probably refuse to share the stage with Daniel Powter, as he originally did with Elton John. Let’s just say I’ll bet it would’ve been a much different scene if Brüno had flown butt-first into Powter’s face rather than Mathers’s face.

Who cares, though? So “He Is a Bad Gay”? The closeted thing could be all an act, a ploy to get girls, just as I’ve always suspected Eminem’s sullen, frowning “I Had a Bad Day” persona was malarkey. I just know he’s a super-funloving sweetheart, always being silly and pulling practical jokes and laughing behind closed doors in his Ultimate McMansion outside Detroit. Actually outside Rochester, Michigan, which is outside Detroit. Double-outsider. Maybe he has a really awkward laugh he’s trying to hide, like, a nerdy horse laugh like that guy on “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Or a high-pitched winnie, or a ridiculous snort-laugh. Or a super-gay cackle.

(I liked it in the ’90s when Eminem would sometimes wear his practical and fashionable little eyeglasses in public. Like, way to just straight-up torpedo the whole tough persona you’re assiduously selling. Way to baffle me. I guess contact lenses are for queers, in his world? Real men wear glasses?)

I was at Como’s Pizza on Woodward Avenue in Ferndale, Michigan, a few years back, sitting on the lanai, when I whispered urgently and very seriously to my friend Paul: “Oh, my God, I think that’s Eminem! Don’t look now.” Paul stood up and pretended to go to the bathroom (like, he went in the bathroom and made a peeing sound with his mouth, but didn’t actually pee) and came back with his up-close report. “SM, that’s a woman. It’s a lesbian.” I looked back over at the person with the platinum buzzcut, white visor, no makeup, hip-hop clothes, and white tennis shoes and realized that Paul was right. Eminem is a lesbian.

You know who has really Had a Bad Day, though? Tiger Woods.

OK, that’s the end of this blog post. Very topical, for once. Well, I’m a few days late with the Powter and Eminem stuff, but hey, pardon me all over the place. I mentioned Tiger Woods! That story’s got legs!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

But they don’t actually laugh at what I said.

“But Scott, what if maybe you’re just not funny?” No maybes: I know I’m not. So don’t say I am. Unless you can back it up with some laughter, coming from your body.

Befitting a tight little club, they laugh at each other’s stuff, of course, behind closed doors, literally. I found that out when I was standing right by the stage at the show headlined by Sarah Silverman recently in D.C. (see accompanying awesome phone-cam shot proving I was there).

It was actually amazingly raucous laughter, coming from a little room just offstage in which the performers who were waiting to go on were watching a live feed of the performer currently onstage, the kind of laughter that makes you laugh yourself, just based on how crazy it is. They were cracking each other’s shit up.

It was kind of endearing. I wish I had some kind of camaraderie like that with someones.

Another trait I’ve noticed is that stand-up guys and gals never don’t talk like stand-up comedians when they’re in public. Three or four of them in the back seat of the cab, talking among themselves, but always one at a time, no interrupting. Nothing normal-persony about their cadences: Not, in a casual tone of voice, “Hey, should we stop at this 7-11?” Instead, in a Carnegie Hall-filling voice to shame Ethel Merman, “How about these convenience stores in D.C., huh? [Insert topical local-oriented joke here, then riff a little]… AM I RIGHT?”

Stand-up and stand-up backlash are such old news now. I’m not gonna get into it. The debate happened, and like acid rain, the Heenes, what to do about nuclear waste, and other controversies, it faded away while you weren’t looking. Accept it: Stand-up is here to stay. It will never sit down.

I took my friend to the Silverman show with me, even though he assured me that he doesn’t like (“I hate”) stand-up comedy. I guess he didn’t get the memo about the end of stand-up backlash.

He explained that he gets bored with the inexorable twin topics of “shit/sex.”

He stood behind and just to the right of me during the show whispering, “See? That one was about sex. … See? That one was about shit. Sex. Shit. Sex. Shit.”

As we watched, I was laughing regularly at the jokes, it was A-game time for all but one of the comics, and it felt good to laugh after so much death and heartache, but I had to admit my friend was right.

I guess poop and poppers are the things that make us humans most uncomfortable, so they are the surest bids for laughs. And that’s why a few stand-up stand-ups, such as Jim Gaffigan, never go blue. They pride themselves on not having to. It takes infinitely more effort not to throw F-bombs (whether it be f*ck or f*art).

I tried something similar to stand-up recently, just to see how much stage fright I have. Telling stories, onstage, to an audience. Man, the extent to which I thought I would “kill” (this is showbiz speak for getting lots of laughs and being a big hit) and the amount of non-killing I did were distressingly the same! I marvel at the huge drop from the killfest I had imagined so clearly to the supremely disappointing reality!

In my mind I would own the room free and clear, everyone falling in love with me as I reluctantly leave the stage in a crush of jubilant applause. The reality was a reedy-voiced, nervous little overweight person blinded by the lights, a stranger to the use of a microphone, rushing through his story and so grateful to leave the stage it was ridiculous.

Turns out it’s harder than it looks!

I’ll get up there again soon, because I am a performer through and through, albeit it one with crippling stage fright. But something else is worrying me. I think I lack the requisite hunger for mass approval and the necessary openness bordering on exhibitionism.

I think I really truly generally don’t like “people” and you know what audiences are made up of? People… Audiences are full of them. It’s going to be a problem.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.