Immigrant Song

Caption Contest!

2010-07-30T13:09:54Z

Responde con el pie de foto que mejor encaja.

The Most Beautiful Man in the World

2010-07-25T17:17:02Z

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxpTZYIbE6g

I have to admit: I’ve always been in love with Kris Kristofferson. Last night we went to see him play in San Feliu de Guixols. It was a magical night. Kris was alone, without a band. Just him and his guitar and a lifetime of songs.

Kris didn’t seem to have an easy time with the weather conditions. It was windy and a bit chilly — terribly problematic for a lone singer. But there he was, alone on a huge stage, in an open-air venue, buttoned up in a black denim jacket and jeans. His voice held up well, sounding richer than ever.

His guitar, a music stand, and a big bottle of orange juice and a handkerchief were the only protection from the cold wind.

Kris blew his nose often between songs, holding the handkerchief in one hand and covering his entire face with it. During one of these pauses, a woman shouted, “Guapo!!” Kris looked up, startled, and laughed out loud. “I can’t believe you people pay good money to watch an old fart like me blow his nose onstage.”

That’s Kris Kristofferson — ever so humble, ever so human, ever so charming. A beautiful man.

I remember watching a documentary on Scorsese, and Scorsese is talking about the filming of “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, in which Kristofferson played the romantic lead. Scorsese says about Kristofferson — in effect — that he’s one of the most beautiful people he’s ever known in his life. Scorcese comments on his own neurotic, high-strung, conflictive nature, and talks about how Kris would see him grappling with some problem on the set, about to lose his temper or have a nervous breakdown. Kris would go up to Scorcese, look directly into his eyes and say in that deep, tranquil voice of his: “Marty, what can I do to help?” Scorsese describes Kristofferson’s compassion, his positive energy, and the calming effect that Kristofferson had on Scorcese, his polar opposite. Scorsese the director describes Kristofferson the actor almost if he were some kind of Buddha. It’s a quality that’s apparent in Kris’s art, whether it’s his music or his acting.

Getting back to the concert:

Last night, he granted the request of someone from the audience to play his hit, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”.

It’s a song about losing your family and waking up with nothing but your pain and a bottomless loneliness. It’s about having to drink from the moment you wake up to anesthetize yourself from that pain. Yet once you’ve had your first beer of the morning, you walk out onto the street and smell the smell of fried chicken — familiar, family smells — that bring you right back to what you’ve lost, and what you’re running from.

I recently talked to someone who said this: “NEARLY ALL EMOTIONS SUCK.” Unless the emotion is joy, most emotions are uncomfortable, and many are unbearably painful. When they happen, they feel like a bottomless pit, with no way out, with no end in sight.

Kristofferson nailed that sensation in this song. He also nailed the allure of alcoholism as a survival mechanism. And how a simple thing like the smell of fried chicken can bring back all that pain in a crushing avalanche of memory.

After the show was over, Kris made himself available to sign autographs. There he was, behind a crude chicken-wire fence that separated him from the pushy crowd holding up papers, cowboy hats, and album covers for him to sign. It was like watching an animal in the zoo. I entered the fray and watched Kristofferson, his face worn with fatigue, diligently signing things, rapid-fire, one after the other. I felt bad for him, that after giving his all in a long solo show, he couldn’t relax immediately afterward. But he just kept signing and saying “Thank you” and shaking the occasional hand through the fence without complaint. A real pro.

“Kris, you’re gonna get carpal tunnel!” I shouted. He paused in the middle of signing, looked up, and his face broke into that contagious grin. “I’ve already got it,” he said, laughing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wBXn4WjOrA

The Truth About Showbiz

2010-07-24T18:12:50Z

Here’s some pictures I took of the bathroom door in the artists’ dressing room of El Sol club in Madrid.

Mind you, these are pics of just one door.

You’ll see that the most popular topic is shitting and farting. This captures the essence of what it is to be a performer.

Not the glory. Not the glamour. That’s the superficial stuff.

What all artists share, together, in this humble little bathroom, is the experience of pure pre-show panic and terror that makes their guts burn and throb… until all this misery explodes in the toilet bowl. Sometimes more than once.

Think about that next time you see a concert by your favorite artist.

Madonna, Cher, Britney & Winona’s Existential Crisis

2010-07-22T07:59:25Z

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkhnS4m4NCM

One of the most succesful combinations of comedy and horror I’ve ever seen. Who else could mix Pink Floyd with pop divas to make art? No one but my friend Nadya Ginsburg and Austin Young. Check out their series “The Worm” on YouTube.

Locked Out of My Office With No Pants: CONCLUSION

2010-07-02T19:18:20Z

I knock on the door. The sound of footsteps as someone approaches, then silence.

Right now, whoever it is is probably staring at me through the peephole and thinking, “What the fuck??!”

Then I hear whispers that sound like hushed argument. Probably along the lines of, “Are you gonna answer it?” “No, YOU answer it!” “Why should I answer it? The woman’s obviously crazy. I can see her out there right now and she’s not wearing any pants!”

An eternity passes, during which out of pure nervousness I pop another cherry in my mouth. Then the door opens.

It’s the wife. She’s wearing reading glasses and her eyebrows are raised way above the rims as she gives me a look that says, “Well. I can’t wait to hear this.”

I explain how I was locked out of my office and ask if I can use their phone to call my husband. Her face softens. “Of course,” she says and leads me inside.

The apartment is sweltering. The sun hits them directly, too, and they have no air conditioning. They’ve opened the windows and the curtains move slightly in the weak breeze.

Just then I see her husband through the open door of another room. He’s sitting on the bed, and — I can’t believe it! –

He’s also wearing no pants.

He’s just sitting there in a pair of tight white bikini briefs. As soon as he sees me, though, he springs into action to put some pants on. I quickly look away. I want to die of embarrassment. Life is so unfair. How come he can cover up in this moment and I can’t? It’s like one of those bad dreams where you show up for work naked and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The wife shows me to the phone and I lower my head as if I’m having trouble dialing the numbers. I want to get that husband out of my peripheral vision, ASAP. But then he walks into the kitchen.

“Hi!” he says, enthusiastically. I sneak a glance at the wife, whose face is a very practiced blank. “So,” he says, “you were locked out of your office?”

“Yeah, how stupid was that?” I laugh weakly. “It was just so hot in there that I had to get comfortable, you know what I mean? And then I opened the balcony door and left. I’m so dumb. I’m really sorry to bother you all,” looking directly and earnestly as possible into THE WIFE’S eyes.

“Oh, it’s no bother at all!” the husband says and smiles hugely. The wife starts looking around the apartment. I dip my head down again and stare at absolutely nothing on the table while waiting for Cesar to answer the phone.

He doesn’t. The phone rings and rings. And rings. And rings.

Heaven help me. I am SO uncomfortable right now.

The wife disappears for a moment and comes back with the baby. The baby has just learned to stand on her own, and she’s completely naked. Her face is smeared with food. She stares at me without making a sound. At least someone else in this house is naked. It makes me feel a little less alone.

“Hi there, cutie,” I say with a big smile, while silently damning Cesar to hell for being half deaf and unable to hear his fucking phone when I’m desperately trying to reach him while strangers are staring at my cellulite.

“No answer?” says the wife.

“Uh, I’m afraid not,” I say. “I’ll just try for another minute, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure, no problem!” the husband practically shouts. The wife nods her head. She’s being awfully nice about the whole thing. I make a mental note to bring her a little gift next time I see her.

A few minutes later, Cesar finally answers the goddamn phone. I decide to be funny about it, to break the tension. “Come get me, now. I’m at the neighbors’ house with no pants on. I’ll explain later.”

Cesar says, “What??” The neighbors laugh. Cesar says, “Only you could do something like this.”

“That’s right, baby, and that’s why you married me!” I say, and hang up. Mission accomplished.

“Gosh, thanks so much. You people saved my life!”

“No problem,” says the wife, smiling. She really is nice today.

“Hey, let me get you a chair while you wait for him,” says the husband.

The idea of me sitting on the neighbor’s kitchen chairs for close to a half hour with no pants on, my sweaty, exposed buns sticking to the surface, while we try to make small talk — “SO… what’s your NAME?” — makes the blood drain from my face.

“Oh no, that’s okay. I’ll just wait downstairs. I don’t want to inconvenience you any more than I already have.”

“It’s no inconvenience at all!” he says.

“No, really, thanks so much for the help. I really appreciate it. I’d better wait for him downstairs, so I can let him in when he gets here.”

I walk down five flights of stairs and wait on the landing, eating cherries while sweat drips down my legs. During the wait, a few neighbors enter the building, giving me strange looks .

“Where are your pants?” says one forty-something man, holding his five-year-old son’s hand.

“I forgot them upstairs,” I say, and eat another cherry.

“Sometimes I forget my pants,” says the little boy.

“Want a cherry?” I say to the little boy. His father edges him away from me and takes him upstairs.

When Cesar finally shows up, he looks strangely over-dressed.

Too bad it’s a Sunday. I’d like to take him shopping for underwear. Tight, white underwear.

Locked Out of My Office With No Pants

2010-06-22T23:42:21Z

Rachel in the plaza of the World Trade Center wearing no pants, New York City, 1997.

Last weekend I was working in my office, which I rent for cheap in a slightly crappy, mixed residential-commercial building.

It was the afternoon, when the sun beats down on my office and turns it into an oven. So I did what I always do: I took off my shoes and pants, and continued working that way. With the doors to the balcony wide open, at least a current of fresh air could enter the room. I almost felt like I was outdoors. It was fun.

Then came time for a snack break. I grabbed a bag of cherries I had in the fridge and headed towards the bathroom to wash them in the sink. Since the bathroom is right next to my office, I never have to worry about embarrassing encounters with the neighbors who live on the same floor, right across the hall.

I exited my office, being careful to keep the door wide open since it locks automatically when closed.

As I approached the bathroom door, I caught an unexpected movement in my peripheral vision: it was the sunlight disappearing. I felt a strong current of air. Whirling around in panic, I cried, “Oh nooooooo!”

It was too late: pushed by an air current coming from the open balcony door, the door slammed shut behind me with a loud WHOMP!

That’s door-speak for “Fuck YOU! HA-HA!”

There I stood in the hallway: in socks, a t-shirt, and underpants, holding a bag of cherries.

My goddamn keys were inside the office.

It was a Sunday, so I couldn’t ask the people who work in the office next door, who happen to share the balcony, to let me into my office that way.

Even worse: my cell phone was in the office. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Cesar has a set of keys to my office, but he is across the city from where I work. The thought of walking that distance in socks and with no pants was not inviting. Besides, I had no cell phone to call ahead, to make sure he’d be there to receive me.

I also had no money on me. All I had was a bag of cherries, and the last shreds of my dignity. The idea entered my mind of panhandling, pants-less, on the street for change to make the call at a pay phone, and I nearly wept.

The best option I could think of filled me with dread, but I had no other choice: I had to knock on the neighbors’ door.

The neighbors are a young, attractive couple with a year-old baby who’s always screaming. The woman is often frazzled, understandably, because she’s got a screaming baby to take care of 24 hours a day. Still, whenever I’ve encountered her, I’ve gotten the feeling that she dislikes me. No reason; there’s just an unpleasant vibe.

It doesn’t help that her husband is friendly to me. Overly friendly, if you know what I mean. He is one of those men who, besides being unusually handsome, can’t help but flirt with every woman he sees. A real charmer. So I’ve been figuring that, besides being exhausted and irritated with a new baby, his wife is probably a little insecure and jealous.

And here I am, about to knock on their door, wearing no pants. And holding my cherries.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Anti-Karaoke: A Parade of Personalities

2010-06-20T14:32:00Z

After years of ignoring it for lack of time, I finally opened Garage Band and recorded a cover of The Cars’ “Good Times Roll”. Boy, is that fun! Here’s a video I made about Anti-Karaoke, using beautiful photos from AK-Madrid and Barcelona photographers Marco Quiroga, Jorge Alvariño, Alejandra Duarte & Desi Estevez. Hope you like it.

How to Renovate a Rancid Jesus!

2010-06-17T17:11:07Z

One of the great things about living in Spain is that every time some old lady moves out of her apartment, you find stuff like THIS on the streets!

A rancid Jesus Christ wall artifact, absolutely obligatory in the Franco era. This particular one isn’t that old, however, as this Jesus is fashioned out of plastic. Eeew!

Unfortunately, in the wear-and-tear of the move, poor Jesus has lost most of his right hand. He also has a nasty scrape over his nose. Still, Jesus seems to be saying, “I should only be so lucky in real life! I sure would’ve preferred losing a hand and scraping my nose instead of being crucified and pierced with goddamned arrows by a bunch of motherfucking lunatics.”

A little bit of paint and Jesus’s nose will be good as new. But what to do about the hand? What if, like me, you’re no sculptor?

The whole thing just makes me sad. Jesus has that typical hangdog look of his, that Louis Prima-Just a Gigolo lament:

I’m so sad and lonely, sad and lonely, oh lonely, oh lonely, lonely, lonely / Won’t some sweet mama come and rescue me?

Then I came up with an idea. Whose company did Jesus really enjoy? I mean, besides that bunch of nerds who went everywhere with him, writing down everything he said, including that one asshole who sold him out to the Romans. Who else did Jesus really get along with?

That’s right: prostitutes!

So here’s what you do: Go to your local Bazaar Oriente and buy a fake Barbie(TM) doll for 2 euros. Barbie dolls are the most accurate representations of real prostitutes you’re gonna find at such low prices. Now here’s the surprise: unlike genuine Barbie dolls, the low-quality fakes are actually anatomically correct! I had no idea until I checked.

Use your Chinese Barbie doll’s vagina to balance her perfectly on Jesus’s scary, broken Edward Scissor-hand. I could swear he’s starting to look happier already! Can’t you see his eyes just light up?

Voilá! Jesus is having more fun than he’s had in years. Thousands, to be exact. Look at the way he’s pointing to his new female companion in the photo below, as if to say, “LOOK, guys! Can you BELIEVE who I’m with tonight??! Pinch me ’cause I must be dreaming!”

Forget that crown of thorns; Jesus will enjoy his new status as a Party Animal… while at the same time jazzing up that boring living room wall!

My Favorite Comedians: Louis C.K.

2010-06-15T22:51:57Z

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcnXpOygKGI

I began doing stand-up in Austin, Texas. I had a friend who worked for Chris Rock’s manager, Dave Becky, so I sent him a tape. He called to say that although it was obvious that I was still pretty “green”, he’d liked it, and that if I came to New York, I could go up at the comedy show he ran on Monday nights at Luna Lounge.

To me, a new comedian, it was like getting the thumbs-up from someone like Doc McGhee. Dave didn’t say he’d manage me — he had too many clients already, and they were much better comedians than I was — but he did say he’d help me out however he could. Being told I could perform at his club was a privilege that most comics dreamed of. So I loaded up the truck and drove to New York, high on my dreams.

Luna Lounge was on Ludlow Street, in the same neighborhood as CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. It was really just a bar and a showroom with a few ratty old couches, and when shows went on, the lucky few who got there early enough sat on the couches, but everyone else had to sit on the floor. And there were LOTS of everyone else. Even though the comedy show, called “Eating It” (a comedy term for “bombing”), was on a Monday night, it was always jam-packed with an audience.

That’s because these comics were doing something new. They were saying stuff that people were hungry to hear. Luna Lounge was a world apart from the traditional comedy clubs, and perfect for young people living in NYC, who were always broke. There was no two-drink minimum like at the comedy clubs, no waiters or waitresses pressuring you to drop $20 in drinks, and — best of all — no rancid, retrograde Andrew Dice Clay-type humor typical of the ’80s and the comedy club scene.

At Luna Lounge, this was “alternative comedy”, supposedly a reaction to the kind of humor that had gone before. Just like “alternative” music was a reaction to classic rock, “alternative” comedy was supposedly more natural, intelligent, authentic, and experimental than “regular” stand-up comedy. “Alternative comedy” was the deconstruction of stand-up comedy.

Of course, there were people who said that the whole idea of “alternative” comedy was a crock of shit, merely a publicity ploy invented by Dave Becky to get the press and the public to pay attention to his stable of young clients. But whether or not “alternative” comedy existed, Dave’s show was one of the hottest things going on in New York.

It was an exciting time. Imagine coming from Texas to New York City and being able to perform on the same stage, and for the same audience, as Sarah Silverman, Zach Galafianakis, Dave Chappelle, Janeane Garofalo, David Cross, Marc Maron, and Louis C.K. I was in awe of the talent that surrounded me.

The first night I performed at Luna Lounge, a comedian named Rich Hall immediately followed me. I was starstruck, because Rich Hall was someone I had watched on TeeVee as a kid. He was in a comedy ensemble show called “Not Necessarily The News”, and he became famous for a segment called “Sniglets”. I remember watching Rich Hall across the room before I went onstage, my stomach turning over and over, thinking, “Oh my God, I’m about to perform in front of the Sniglets guy!” To me, he was a big star. When I finished, he patted me on the back and said “Good set.” Rich Hall spoke to me! Rich Hall gave me a compliment! I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.

In the midst of this scene was Louis C.K. He was known as “the comic’s comic”. Everyone loved his comedy. Every comic wanted to be like him, in the sense of being able to be so natural and genuine onstage, so convincing, and at the same time, write such wickedly edgy, insanely funny material. The key to Louis C.K. was that he could say the most outrageous things because he seemed like such a regular, nice, honest guy that he earned your trust.

Louis C.K. was the opposite of those affected, exaggerated comedians like Robin Williams or Gilbert Gottfried or Jerry Lewis that irritated the rest of us comics with their fake attitudes, their dumb voices, and their obvious humor. To us, these comics were forced and artificial. The real art of comedy was in convincing the audience that this was really you, not a “crazy character”. To us, “crazy characters” were for dumb people who would laugh at anything. Comedy was the same as acting: it — or at least you — had to be believable.

I got to know Louis C.K. as a colleague over the years, in the clubs and at the occasional party. He was always the kind of guy you see onstage: an ordinary, likeable, down-to-earth guy. A nice guy, always ready to say something nice and supportive to younger, less experienced comics-- which isn’t how all comics are, by any means. Louis was the kind of person we all wanted to be onstage: totally stripped down to your bare essence, seemingly effortless, natural, real. The kind of person everyone instantly likes … and thus can say the most fucked-up things because he’s gained the audience’s permission to do it.

Louis C.K. would go on to write for Chris Rock and work with him on numerous projects, including directing Chris’s movie, “Pootie Tang”. He also made his own films and had his own HBO series, “Lucky Louie”.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzbURUrgQao

2 Nuevos Shows de Comedia

2010-06-11T15:49:34Z

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSy-8yRKLQQ

En 30 de Septiembre estrenaré un nuevo show de comedia…. más otro show de comedia experimental, peligroso y vergonzosamente autobiográfico que tendrá lugar en una FECHA ÚNICA, el viernes (sí! un VIERNES!) 9 de Julio, 23:30h, en el Teatro Llantiol de Barcelona.

Si estás por la Ciudad Condal, ven, ponte cómodo en una mesa, bebe un montón de alcohol y disfruta el hecho de que no eres yo. De eso se trata el show.