Yep... Couldn't do that.

At about 2am, I bolted awake flailing about as hard as I could, unable to feel or move my arms.

Apparently I had just slept on them wrong and they went to sleep, as the feeling came back within about 20 seconds.  And ooh did it come back.  Spent the next five minutes breathing heavy from an overdose of adrenalin and aching arm muscles.

As did my poor girlfriend who was equally startled awake as I was waving my lifeless arms back and forth, nearly whacking her in the head.  It was dark and she had no idea what was going on.  She thought maybe it was a sleep walking episode like I used to have as a kid (and once with her years ago).

And in that sudden, barely half awake instant, you don’t think “Oh, my arms are just asleep.”  You think, “Holy shit!  I can’t feel my arms!  I’m losing my arms!”

They say that when you’re about to die suddenly, your life flashes before your eyes.  The past, that is.  But when you have a sudden non-life-threatening, but possibly life changing event happening, it turns out your future flashes before your eyes.

And was it something like “Oh no!  I’ll never be able to hug my girlfriend again!”  Nope.  It was, “I’m going to have to learn how to eat with my feet!”

I immediately pictured some TV show I saw ages ago about a guy who had no arms and learned how to do everything with his feet.  And, as I’m flailing my arms wildly, hoping the feeling comes back, that’s what I thought.  Eating with my feet.

We always think we’ll be brave and collected when something like that goes down.  And honestly, my girlfriend knows a guy that recently had a stroke, lost all feeling in his legs and collapsed.  Then proceeded to spending 20 minutes dragging himself to a phone to call an ambulance.

That’s “made for TV movie” kind of bravery.  I think you’d need more time for a Oscar winner like 127 Hours.  But 20 minutes should definitely get you a movie of the week on NBC.

In my 30 seconds of numbness, I was about 10 seconds away from screaming  like the new bottom in cell block 5.  I’d like to think that soon after that I would have gathered my wits to obtain help.  Getting to a phone to dial for help (with my toes, of course).

But who knows what each of us would do in that kind of situation?  Guess I’ll have to start sleeping with a voice-activated bluetooth headset on.

And how was your night?

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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Alert sheep... Yep, I can't tell the difference either.

There are two stories about who discovered the coffee bean and its effects.  The first I learned this past weekend at an exhibit about early technology in the Islamic world.

In the 9th century, an Ethiopian goat and sheep herder ( ya herd?) named Kaldi discovered that when his animals ate the beans they were more alert and awake.  My question is, what the heck does a “more awake” sheep look like?  And if it can’t sleep, what does it count?

The other story attributes the discovery to Sheik Omar who was exiled from Mocha (coincidence?  I think not…) to a desert cave near Ousab.  After trying to eat some crappy, bitter berries he tried to roast them to improve the flavor, discovered that it made them too hard, and so boiled them.  He ended up with a brown liquid that probably tasted great to a guy living in a cave with nothing to eat and a lot of time on his hands.

He found that it revitalized him and he lived on it for days at a time.  He managed to get word of his new “miracle drug” back to Mocha (after his first cup of the morning, of course).  They asked him to come back and made him a saint.  Yep, Saint Omar of Coffee.

I assume the people of Mocha immediately went into the next room after the saint-ing ceremony and said, “You know this stuff tastes like crap.  Try adding some milk and chocolate to it.”

Coffee spread from Ethiopia, into Yemen and the rest of the Middle East, then cracked Europe with its entrance into Italy. Pope Clement VIII proclaimed it a Christian beverage.  I guess that’s like “Today’s Christianity is brought to you by Maxwell House, official coffee sponsor of the Vatican”.  Can you say kick backs?

And really, the Mormons would probably have something to say about that official “Christian beverage” proclamation.  Actually, Joseph Smith wrote “Hot drinks are not for the belly.”  That’s right, screw you too hot cocoa.

The first European coffee house opened in Italy opened in 1645.  It featured an open mic where one guy showed up to strum 16 bars of a G chord before finally getting to the lyric.  The first patron of the coffee shop is actually still there, nursing his damn espresso.

During the 16th-19th centuries, British seamen would make substitute coffee by dissolving burnt bread in hot water.  Thereby cementing the repuation of British cuisine the world over.

Alrighty, that’s today’s partial, probably misinformed (thanks Wikipedia), and extremely holey (not ‘holy’) history of coffee.

I’m going to go have a Coke.

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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From one point of view it can be seen as leveraging your assets.  Others may see it as making a desperate push for a site nobody gives a rip about.

What do you think?  Will it work?

Are you going to circle me on Google Plus?

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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Hey, you know what's cool? Neither does this guy.

When I was a kid at Disneyland, I would see people wearing all their mouse ears and goofy hats.  And I’d think, wouldn’t it be great if the regular world were open and creative enough to let people wear weird hats on a daily basis.

And recently I see this guy wearing a knit panda bear hat with huge black ears and I thought, “I was wrong.  He looks like an idiot.”

He’s acting like he’s all cool, but you just can’t trust a doctor in a panda hat.

For the most part it’s kids and teenagers that wear them.  Little emo pre-hipsters.  They may as well be drinking PBR out of a Capri Sun bag, cuz that’s where they’re headed.

I think that’s when you really become an adult.  When you look at people younger than you and think, “Do they know they look that stupid?”

I think if you timed it right in the course of your own personal development and, on a Wednesday look at your picture and go, “Man, I look good.”  And on Thursday, “What the hell was I thinking?!”

They don’t realize that in 20 years those pictures of them wearing an animal on their head are STILL going to be on facebook. It will no longer take a resourceful mother to show your embarrassing kid pictures to people.  The internet is now everyone’s embarrassing mother.

The internet will happily go, “And here’s a picture of little Johnny after his first beer, passed out in the alley behind the bar with a knit monkey hat on his head, his pants around his ankles and a cock drawn on his face.  I’m sure he’ll make an excellent addition to your company.”

That’s an advantage that anyone over 30 right now has.  All those horrible pictures of you following every high school fad can be hidden away in a box and/or thrown in a fire.

The only way to avoid ridicule over your odd early life fashion choices is to do what I do.  Continue to look ridiculous.

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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Elimination of the leap second could totally screw up Marty McFly's chances of getting back to 1985. How dare they even consider such a thing.

Apparently there is discussion afoot of eliminating the “leap second”.  That’s an extra second added to the clock once every year or two to accommodate the Earth’s bit of wobble.  The next one is due June 30th.  I will be throwing a leap second party at my house where I will invite guests in for exactly one second.  I won’t even need to clean the house because they won’t have time to notice the dust bunnies.

Some people want to eliminate the leap second because it means they have to shut their systems down for the length of a heartbeat.  In the words of Albert Einstein, “Aww, poor baby.”  Ok, maybe Einstein didn’t coin that phrase.  But he probably said it at some point.  Prove me wrong.

The reason for having the leap second is that it keeps the atomic clocks in line with the daily solar cycle.  Without it, noon  could occur while the sun is nowhere in sight… a thousand years from now.  Basically each century would get thrown out of wack by about 90 seconds.

Alright look… You people whining about shutting down your system for 1 freakin’ second once a year or so… Deal with it.  Your business won’t go bankrupt because you’re not plunging money from our pockets in that extra second.  And if we need to get rid of the leap second, let’s get rid of some other stuff that happens once a year, with far reaching effects, that I don’t like.  We can start with Tax Day, Black Friday sales, and new Lady Gaga videos.

On the flip side… Science is worried about the thousand year solar time shift that would happen.  As if sometime in the next thousand years we won’t come up with a better way to deal with the leap second.  The science community sure doesn’t have a lot of faith in themselves, do they?  How about a compromise?

Two ways to deal with that.  Plan A: Get rid of the leap second and put our an annual statement that nobody has figured out a better way to do it yet.  Sort of a “we’ll get to it next year” type thing.  Sometime in the next thousand years, someone will figure it out.  And the annual notice acts as a little reminder.  A scientific honey-do list.

Or Plan B: we stick with the leap second for the next 5 years while a few teams dig in and try to do it better, so the whiny business people don’t have to shut down for a second.  If we haven’t figured it out after 5 years, back to plan A.

Either way, don’t we have bigger issues to worry about?  I’m pretty sure there’s no guy looking at his post-cancer health bills totaling in the tens of thousands and thinking, “Boy that leap second sure is making life hard.”  As many different issues as were being raised during the Occupy demonstrations, I’ll bet nobody even mentioned the leap second.

My point is, if you have a strong opinion on either side of the leap second issue… just shut up already.

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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I walked into Burger King and ordered a whopper.  The lady asks me if I want to try the triple whopper.  Triple whopper!  That’s a patty, then a tomato, then a patty, then some lettuce, then a patty, then some cheese, then some more cheese, then an entire side of beef.

I told her I don’t have enough medical insurance to order the triple whopper.  For the record, she agreed with me that it was a bad idea.  That’s extreme.  That’s the kind of burger than nobody would miss if it weren’t there.  And yet, as I sat having lunch in that small midwestern town, I saw triple whoppers being ordered one after another.

Let’s just say, I sold out of my XXL t-shirts quickly at that evening’s show.

There are women walking around carrying a $400 purse that has $12 and a maxed out credit card in it.  And they waited IN LINE to get into the Coach store they bought it at.  Waited in line…. to buy a purse.  Is the purse magic?  Does it somehow make one’s life easier?  Does it function better than a $20 purse?

Super rich people with lots of things aren’t extreme.  In fact after reading The Millionaire Mind, I discovered that many rich people are actually quite frugal.  But even if they aren’t, they’ve got the dough.  Regular people seem to be playing Financial Survivor.  How much can I get/use/eat/buy before my life implodes?  That’s extremist capitalism to me.

We do it with everything… 4 hour porn videos.  Who needs 4 hours of porn? Most guys don’t get through the opening credits.  It’s “starring Julie Jugs” and boom done.  Right there.

Besides you can’t jangle your junk for four hours.  It’ll come out of there looking like the loser in a boxing match.  The head will be all broken, knocked off to the side.

“I don’t know Howard.  I thought I was going to be able to last make it through the last round.  Then he started doing this weird twisting thing and I just lost it.  But I have to thank God for letting me get that far.  I do it all for God.”

In fact I recently walked past an adult video store near a venue I was performing at.  It was the kind with little theaters in it.  They were advertising an all-day pass.  That doesn’t even seem physically possible.  Maybe if they weren’t sitting in a little sticky black room all day, those guys could earn some money to buy a computer and DSL and get their abundance of porn online like the rest of the world.

And watch out because the Lexus LS 600h will be coming out in a few months.  It’s a hybrid that’s all green and environmentally friendly.  And it will cost $104,000.  And I guarantee you, people who have never seen $104k will be trying to buy one.

Ok, can you tell I’ve been thinking about what to buy my girlfriend for Valentine’s Day?  Maybe I just need to go shopping.

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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That's me in the red, of course.

I was flying out one time to do a gig and I was at the airport checking my luggage with the porter outside.  I got to the front of the line and the porter was a black guy.  He looked at me and said, “Don’t hurt me now!”

Being that he was a pretty big dude and I being the not-so-big-dude that I am, figured he was making a joke, so I laughed.  And he says, “No, I’m not kidding!”

I’m like, “Sorry, what?”

He says, “People that look like you don’t like people that look like me.”

Thoroughly confused, I’m thinking, “Did someone draw a swastika on my forehead while I was asleep?  Did someone pin a confederate flag to my back?”

Now, I’m in a line full of people.  This guy’s got total control of where my bags end up.  And he thinks I’m going to get all racist on him?  Like I’m going to say, “Them bags are going to Arkansas!  Don’t mess it up, Darkie!”

That, to me, sounds like a surefire way for your bags to end up in Vanuatu.

For Pete’s sake I was wearing a t-shirt with Prince on it.  How would I be pegged for a racist?

And that’s the thing about a lot of racism.  Maybe one time some dude that looks like me did something racist to this guy and now he’s afraid of me.

And of course, now I have to tip him like a guilty white man to avoid looking racist.  So he was either terribly mistaken or crazy like a fox.

I think most racism is just fear.  Maybe you get mugged by a black guy one time and two years later you find yourself in a thrift store looking for a sheet you can cut some eye holes in.

I mean, you don’t want to go to Macy’s for that.  You don’t want to spend a lot of money of 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets just to cut eye holes in them.

There’s probably some dude out there rocking satin sheets, but to each their own.

Anyway, the moral of the story here is if you’re going to fear someone else, make sure you have a good reason to do so and aren’t just accessing some old experience.

Here’s another experience… I was in downtown Los Angeles, standing in front of the comedy club I was playing that night.  I was leaned against the wall and was looking down at my phone, my hair obscuring my face.

A group of 3 or 4 black guys walks past me and I don’t look up because I was in the middle of reading a facebook post.  One of the guys says, “Hey baby, you just gonna ignore me when I walk by like that?”

Now, do I look up and flash him the facial hair?  If perchance he were homophobic or intoxicated (Friday night in downtown LA after all), then the situation could suddenly be my fault somehow.  I don’t really want to get gay bashed when I’m not even gay.  (And I can’t think of any jokes on that premise right now that Moshe Kasher hasn’t already done in his great bit.  But I couldn’t find a video of it to show you.)

So my other option was to continue to ignore the guy and hope he kept walking which he did.  Apparently he’s used to being ignored by women with lines like that.

But my response wasn’t due to his ethnicity.  It was due to his size and girth and our location.  I would have reacted the same to a similarly sized white dude (who probably WOULD have had a confederate flag on his back).

After the moment had passed, my first thought was, “I just got hit on by a black dude.  My ass must be getting fat.”

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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Call it what you want. Texas just got tea-bagged.

I got a spam email for some penis enlargement pills the other day.  And the subject line said “Don’t be alarmed when it doesn’t stop growing.”

I think it’s safe to say that I would be awfully damned alarmed if it didn’t stop growing.  You CAN have too much of a good thing.

Ladies, if you thought guys were just one big dick before… Wait til they have one that never stops growing.

It’s like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. <Cue Rod Serling> “A man takes a pill to send him and his girl to the heights of pleasure.  Instead it sends them to… The Twilight Zone.”

There’s a possibility of, while sleeping, getting tangled in it and suffocating.  You’re supposed to strangle it.  Not the other way around.

At first you could just throw it over your shoulder.  But eventually you’d have to wheel it around on one of those things you roll a garden hose on.  And I don’t know about you, but my garden always always has a kink in it even on the roll-y thing.

I really don’t want my penis to attack Tokyo.
“Giant wee wee attacking!  It go ‘ppt ppt’ and cover Tokyo in white gooey!”

But the good part is when you die they’ll be able to cut it and count the rings to see how old you are.

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Sure, I'd love to meet your Aunt Mary. Wait... What?

I’ve talked in my show about the fact that I don’t smoke weed.  But, due to my appearance, I look like I’m a lot more savvy than I actually am.  That has led to some awkward conversations…

Him: So where are you from?

Me: The San Francisco Bay Area

Him: Oh yeah?  I’m moving there soon.  How’s the medicine situation there?

Me: Um, ok I guess.  We have a couple Kaisers plus the county hospitals.

That was a situation where air quotes would have been very useful to me.  In my defense, I had been talking to this guy about his go-kart business.  And we were at the Disney Expo.  So my brain wasn’t “there”.

It’s not like I was expecting Goofy to roll up and go “Hey kids, anyone want to try a Goof Butt?”  (Yes, I had to look up that term.)

One night in a club a guy whispered and asked if I wanted some broccoli.  I thought, “Man, these vegetarians are getting really pushy.”  Fortunately, I don’t like broccoli either, so my answer of “Eww, icky!” was still appropriate.

Just to illustrate what I’m dealing with, and the importance of weed to those who indulge… There are roughly 137 slang words for “money“, 130 for “vagina“, and 530 for “marijuana“.  That total is probably due to it’s long history of potheads thinking the cops won’t know what they’re talking about if they use another word for it.

“Dude!  They’re on to us!  Ok, look.. Call it ‘Green Goddess’.  They’ll never figure that one out!”

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

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