To celebrate, we will do five shows over three days at the newly-monikered Times Square Comedy Club. It's just like the old Laugh Factory that the building used to house, which is just old like the old Show World strip club that the building used to house.

It's still glitzy, seedy (literally... that was a sperm joke people), gauche, and ghosts of old strangled strippers haunt it ... but in a fun way. (um, also literally. A stripper was murdered in the back dressing room shower about 9 years ago. I'm amazed they don't try to promote that more when they sell tickets to the comedy shows.)

Here are the particulars in an easy to swallow Halloween candy-size packet:

WHO: Jamie Kennedy & Bill Dawes
WHAT: It's Comedy, Stupid!
WHERE: Times Square Comedy Club (303 W. 42nd St., NY, NY 10036 -- corner of 42nd and 8th)
WHEN: Thurs 5/8 8pm, Fri 5/9 8pm and 10pm, Sat 5/10 8pm and 10pm
WHY: Why not? And how many times can you see 'Iron Man?'

Anyone who is a fan or a friend or a low-grade stalker HAS to come! This is going to be awesome. There are very limited FREE tickets and discounted tickets. So hit me up ASAP (bill@billdawes.com) if you want some of that shit. Otherwise, pay for it and support the arts, you fucking jew...

and I say that in the least anti-semitic, most slumping-consumer-confidence way possible. So please, loosen your grip on those shekels ya' schmendricks!

-------------------------

UPDATE: HALF PRICE TICKETS FOR THIS WEEKEND'S SHOWS NOW AVAILABLE!

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CLICK ON THIS LINK, PRINT IT OUT, AND BRING IT TO THE BOX OFFICE WHEN YOU BUY YOUR TICKETS

HERE IS THE LINK AGAIN

Anygag, the double-standards are inexhaustible.. I bet you could go back to the Stone Age and the first almost standing upright comic probably had a bit that went like this:

"Hey, buddy, you look woman-hole-whipped! I bet you're the gatherer at your cave and SHE'S the hunterer! Dude, you put the 'sap' in 'homo sapien'. You probably hold her animal skin-holdy-thing while she tries on skimpy animal skin foot coverings! Haha! I bet she clubbed YOU over the head and had sex with you when YOU were unconscious!!! These Upper Paleolithic women got ideas!!! Hahahahaa!! (please note that this joke endorses absolutely no previous knowledge of actual pre-history).

Unfortunately, as much as I chafe at the whole idea of men and women being fundamentally different, like gravity to physical movement, it's been the most consistent, immutable, restrictive set of rules governing my entire life. It drives me fucking crazy. And it's part of the reason gay comics have nothing to fucking talk about other than Judy Garland and how 'technology is annoying'; they can't delve into the antipodal nature of the sexes.

Take, for instance, the perplexing female obsession with shoes and handbags.

What's that you say? Women love shoes?! Come on, Bill, you can't steal Jeff Foxworthy's closer from 1987! You're right, person in my head, so let's start with that idea as a constant.

X= The female preoccupation with shoes that eludes 99.99% of all men.

Now, let's solve for Y(the fuck these bitches love shoes)..

When I was living with my ex-girlfriend -- a period in my life I call 'oops' -- she always tried to recruit me into her cult of footwear fascination. One of the ways she did this was by showing me pictures of shoes on ebay.

"Oh my God, it's a Manolo Blahnik mary jane, but look at the little daisy on the strap. This is soooooo cuuuuute! What do you think?"

I'm no fancy meteorologist with a degree from a community college, but the cross-continental air currents seemed as confused as the people. For most of the journey, the plane pitched and shimmied like a space shuttle bursting through layers of atmosphere in a Michael Bay movie. I couldn't help but think that our bumpy ride was a reflection of the turbulent terrain beneath us. The bubbling cauldron of anger and political unrest seemed to agitate the air above it, and we, as working guests, had to fly right through. Stupid theory? Maybe... but has anyone ever experienced turbulence over Switzerland? I'm unconvinced.

The flying waitresses walked around with plastered smiles like it was 'Turbulent Tuesday' at Bennigans, but I was once again utterly convinced I would die a fiery death. To stave off my imminent demise, I turned and lifted my hips depending on how we careened in order to help steer the plane. Although I'm sure my Martin Short Ed Grimley impression (FUCK YOU! I'm not old!!) was effectively the only reason we didn't skid into a field of farming negroes, I also -- as a back up -- used my psychic voodoo brain waves to keep the plane aloft. Even Jamie Kennedy, very much used to my "fagolic" in-flight behavior, leaned in towards me and said, "Okay, we're probably going down. Before we do, just admit that I can get more girls than you."

"You only get more girls than me because people think you're Seth Green," I quipped back, a lonely bead of sweat swelling on my brow before falling and shattering on my rigid forearm.

In generalized moments of terror like this, my life... lollygags in front of my eyes. The discrepancy between what I want and where I'm at suddenly and sharply comes into stark relief, as if to say 'Ta da? Really Bill? That's what you brought to the table?' I always extrapolate into the aftermath of my demise, picturing the front page of the paper saying:

"JAMIE KENNEDY AND UNKNOWN COMIC DIE IN EXTRA FIERY AND INORDINATELY LONG SPIRALLING PLANE CRASH FULL OF SCREAMING BABIES!"

I try to short circuit these morbid fantasies by redoubling the quickness of my hip movements in my seat and the strength of my psychic voodoo brain waves. After all, I want an obit with a fuckin' picture next to it at least when I die! I need to book at least a CSI or two, even a syndicated reality show; something that would hypothetically earn that type of posthumous treatment. Maybe one great supporting role *coughcough* in one great independent feature film, who knows? Whatever the formula for New York Times canonization and semi-immortality is, I want the variables from my life to plug in and work. I just really don't want to be a footnote to a footnote when I die.

The key to figuring out which jokes piqued the wrath of the venue promoters in Johannesburg lies in a glitch in the matrix of South African culture. It manifests itself, sadly, in the cuntrosity of the people. And by that, I mean the white people.

South Africa is a puritanical country with a long history of institutionalized disenfranchisement that many of the white people there arrogantly defend with a Gestapo-esque blind sense of nationalism. Kind of like America... 70 years ago. Except Americans spent the better part of the 20th century struggling through the WEB Dubois' "Color Line" so that at least the fair-minded crackers among us can admit, "Oops." We can at least discuss the possibility of reparations (as long as black people agree to stop Martin Lawrence from making another Big Momma's House). In fact, we have come so far that we--a country comprised mostly of honkeys!--might elect a black president this year! Granted, South Africa beat us to the punch here. They already have a black president, but that's only to the severe chagrin and/or embarrassment of every white South African I met. Whenever I mentioned the opinions and politics of the incumbent president, it was uniformly met with an eye roll and a nervous laugh.

As a result, racial humor seems to work differently in these two bizarrely analogous yet distinct societies. In America, most racially insensitive/potentially incendiary jokes work on two deeply psychological levels:

1. Deindividuation. There needs to be a large group of people to buffer the possible personal nature of racial jokes. In other words, smaller crowds become a much trickier forum for anything edgy, particularly regarding race, sex, and religion. If the joke is thrown into a ribald crowd of people who feel anonymous, they will laugh from their gut without feeling singled out.

2. White Guilt Delay. Even in large crowds, 'white guilt' is a hugely important factor in the reception of jokes about race. White people will look around at whatever race is the subject of the joke to see their reaction before they will allow themselves to laugh. Once they see that, they might laugh, approximately 5 seconds after the joke has landed. Mike Vecchione calls it the '5 second white guilt delay.'

Mind you, this works only with a GOOD joke... or somewhat good joke. When you combine a shitty, bomb of a joke with racially challenging material, you have Michael Richards. The problem with Michael Richards is not that he said the forbidden word, it's that he is (was, rather) the shittiest comic on the Laugh Factory stage.

I will add a 'clue' to make it a little more fair. I mean, who wants the house to win?

The clue is: White South Africans are inherently, intrinsically, and unequivocally racist. Whites are (for the most part) the only people in Jo-burg with disposable income. You need to have income to see a comedy show. That's like a syllogism or something... Hehe, I said gism.

And for those coming over from the message board, ONE of those fifteen jokes I wrote down on a notepad but have never had the balls to say.

Remember -- Two of those jokes were cited by the ladies when they kicked me off stage. One of them i didn't have the cojones to attempt. And the others, surprisingly, were met with a fair amount of yuk-yuks (that is how South Africans laugh, in 'yuk-yuk' form).

The winner gets free admission and drinks for ANY show in which I'm performing . I might even spring for top shelf liquor if you win and can make it out to one of my shows with Jamie Kennedy at the DOWNTOWN COMEDY CLUB IN LOS ANGELES ON MARCH 14TH AND MARCH 15TH!

The words came booming over the God mike, conspicuously ordering me off stage in front of over a thousand similarly confused audience members.

Where the fuck was that coming from? Some bitch, somewhere tantalizingly close, was being conveniently obscured by night sky, spotlights, and the vast network of speakers arrayed across the courtyard of the Montecristo Casino in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I whipped my head around like a Greaser at a knife fight, to no avail. There were neither Jets nor Sharks behind me to shank or save my ass. On the fringe of conscious behavior, I jammed the microphone into the stand and did the Project Runway/just-pooped-my-undershorts shuffle of shame off-stage. To say that my current international tour was starting out inauspiciously is an understatement.

It was my first international set since the Camp Liberty gig in Baghdad and, once again, I had managed to create some controversy. At least in Iraq, the USO let me finish offending them before they summoned me over the next day with an index finger and an, 'Um... not so much.'

As I tentatively walked -- with my back to the audience -- up the 30 foot length of jutting catwalk offstage in the lingering pin-drop silence, I did a 4 bloopbloop TiVo rewind of my half-hour set to track down the precise moment I crossed the line. I imagined there must have been some unseen maelstrom in the recesses of the courtyard that precipitated my ouster. For the life of me, though, I couldn't hone in on the joke, or jokes, that caused it. I reached the end of what felt like the never-ending corridor in Poltergeist, and the speakers suddenly crackled to life again: "Sorry about that! Now, are you ready to get the show moving along with your headliner?!!!"

I stood backstage in my best pissed off white boy stance -- arm akimbo, necked jutted forward, mouth agape, eyes overtly bugged. "What the fuck was that?" I asked, first to myself and then to the sundry embarrassed unknowns hovering backstage. I looked around for an answer, but people avoided me like I was the kid in the cafeteria who dipped his fries in mayonnaise. "What happened?" I pleaded to everyone, to God, and to no one in particular. I mean, I have had incidents before where I made bad judgment calls. For instance, once during Jay Davis' very popular "Life of the Party" show in Los Angeles, I did a joke about fisting a kindergarten teacher. In front of his church group. Oops. But I was utterly bewilderbeested as to why the South Africans were offended.

First, I am working on a two or three part story about my semi-successful, semi-disastrous, fully awesome trip to South Africa doing stand-up, that should be done in a week or so. Part 1 will be about the first leg on Johannesburg, where, for the first time in my professional career, I got kicked off stage and almost put a fat bitch in a cross-over toe hold. The new blog also involves a competition, so keep posted...

Second, I am starring in a new Off Broadway play about lesbians in the 1950s. When I heard I got an audition to do a play with a bunch of half-naked lesbians, I thought one thing: have they been reading my diary? Plus, Lily Tomlin just signed on as a producer, and apparently she's been working 9 to 5 on it. Nothing on that? Really?

The play is called "Beebo Brinker Chronicles". Previews begin tonight and Opening Night is March 5. The part most of you will be interested in is that I HAVE COMP TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS FROM TODAY THROUGH SUNDAY, FEB 24.. If you want to see me do my play thing (there is a rumor that I show cockage in it, by the way), email me at bill@billdawes.com and I will hook you up with the freebies.

Third, I will be doing a killer set at the Laugh Factory in NYC on March 1st at 10pm. It's being filmed by a legit TV film crew so I will look extra hawt and be extra funny. Also, if you sit in the front you, I will literally dry hump your face. And, if you complain about it, I will have a big black guy in a suit throw you out.

I'm setting up the first 6 Rudius readers ONLY with comp tickets to the show if they email me. It will be sold out so HURRY up with requests! Half-price tickets (only 10 American dollars) are also available at the door if you mention you're with the group "superjabs" at the box office. It's going to be a great show, so if you're in NYC on March 1st you should definitely look into coming by.

There will be drinking afterwards and all that jazz with Ted 'JABS' LeClaire (www.myspace.com/superjabs) if you are into debauchery. I probably won't be going out afterwards because I will be in my apartment alone telling myself I'm better than you.

Lastly, thanks again for reading and look for the story of my banishment from the city of Johannesburg very soon!!!

Begrudgingly, I watched an episode where Elisa had to make a casual outfit for a male model. Since Ms. Jimenez ONLY designs "couture" - on the body - she found herself in a self-imposed conundrum. Out of respect for the love she shares with her partner in New Mexico, Elisa never touches other male bodies. In an interview sidebar, she aired her apprehension, stating, "My current lover is the only man I've ever made clothes on."

Hmm....that's interesting.

Because for more than two years, she made clothes on, and for... ME.

But she wasn't necessarily lying...

Confused? I hope so.

If you're patient enough to read the rest of this entry, though, your confusion will clear and you will have read a strange and heartbreaking story. There is not an ounce of exaggeration or fabrication in it. I took no creative license; this isn't a poignant Denzel Washington movie. The conversation that happened on a fairly recent Saturday afternoon is recounted almost verbatim, transcribed cleanly from an audio clip running incessant loops through my cerebellum for the past two years. The preternatural conclusion of my relationship with Elisa is probably the weirdest thing I've ever experienced.

It may also be the saddest.

Six years ago this past October, I approached a girl on the corner of 47th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan. It was the first Saturday of October. For anyone who doesn't know The City, early October is smack in the middle of the perennial Indian Summer; a period that, along with Spring, serves as a kind of magical bookend for the warm weather months in New York. It is the time, mostly, that Manhattanites fall in love.

I knew her by sight. A mutual friend, Phalana, had taken me to one of her Soho fashion shows earlier in the year and I remember thinking she was one of the oddest and sexiest women I had ever laid eyes on. I don't remember how I approached her since I didn't know her name, but according to Elisa, I stopped in front of her on the corner of 47th Street and 9th Avenue and said, simply:

"Hey, Elisa."

Whereupon she stopped and looked at me quizzically, without any recollection of having met.

"Do I know you?" she offered.

"Hi, I'm Bill, nice to meet you," was my flat-footed response.

"Hi, I'm Elisa."

Months later, despite my subsequent playful protestations to the contrary, she insisted that hearing her name was the ONLY reason she would have stopped to speak to a stranger on the street. Whatever the case may be, the result was us standing there for an awkward, red-faced three minutes, shuffling imaginary dust off the concrete sidewalk with shy shoes, stammering and stuttering our way through the beautifully painful first conversation.

We discussed our mutual friend Phalana, blushed a little more, awkwardly parted, and then retreated to our apartments, conveniently positioned catty-corner to each other. I bounded up the stairs two at a time and called Phalana to inquire about Elisa. I could feel her Cheshire grin through fiber-optic cable all the way from Los Angeles -- Elisa had just called as well, with a similar breathless inquiry.

The book is called That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! We were under attack. ICBMs were imploding the hotel walls. I was doomed... I was.... Jesus... Is that snoring? Someone had just woken me up with a deafening, staccato snore that sounded like a jungle beast trying to devour a baby whole. Who was it?

A better question might have been, who wasn't it? Everyone was snoring in that room. I felt like I was on a movie set with a bunch of shitty actors who were all told, "Okay, fellas, now really show me you're sleeping hard.. aaaaaaaaaaaaand ACTION!" I have never heard such interesting permutations of the snore, sleep apnea, sleep farting, sleep burping (yes, that too), blubbering, and lip smacking in my life. I kept looking around for Snuffy Smith or animatronic Pirates holding big brown jugs with "X's" on them. Jesus, is it just biomechanical sinus issues or was everyone here raped by an uncle?

Rustled (and kept) awake by the end result of poor American dietary habits, I decided to do a recap of the night before:

Although the crowd was a hell of a lot more excited to see Paul Wall and Jamie Kennedy, they really responded well to my part -- the self-described "who the fuck is this guy?" portion of the show. Yes, the USO told me to be a little more "clean," shall we say, with my subject matter after the first show in Iraq, but, as most of you need no help remembering, I am a fucking idiot and often react to external stimuli before I allow dispassionate logical analysis to guide my decision-making process.

In my defense, I sort of actually attempted to go clean at one point, but then got a little carried away by the collective energy of the group. Is that bad? I did try to couch it in terms of 1st Amendment rights when I said,

"It's because of you in the US Armed Forces that I get to make a living in New York and LA doing comedy. Some of the stuff I say is pretty offensive and you might not like it. But it's because of heroes like YOU protecting our country and protecting my freedom of speech that I GET to do it.... So buckle up, motherfuckers!"

I don't remember everything I did, but I know I didn't censor myself. I will talk to Tracy in the morning and I'm sure it will be fine, I remember thinking before I succeeded in incorporating the labored uvula-shuttering of my sleeping roommates into a fitful dream about being on a night Safari through a jungle full of SNORING ASSHOLES!!

Finally, after a stop-and-go night of sleep, watch and cell phone alarms meeped and jingled, signaling it was time to leave Iraq.

There had been plans to see Flintstone Village (scroll down) in the morning, but like much else in Iraq, the preservation of its memory would have to be from a safe distance. As we pulled onto the airstrip, we were told that the village had been bombed by insurgents anyway, and that it wasn't really quite the dazzling display of rocks and caves that it once had been. I protested in my mind. How were they even sure it had been bombed? "Hey, I distinctly remember this rock being over there!"

That was exactly when we heard the explosions.

Now, obviously, this analogy can only be extended so far since no one was flogging their dolphin to my set, but you could almost feel the collective balls of the battalions buzzing in a state of Harmonic Convergence; and that wasn't going to sync with a ingenuous, G-rated bit about being an altar boy in Philly. Fortunately, things picked up when Stu stormed on and they started rapping their "Blowin' Up!" tunes, "Circle Circle Dot Dot" and "Rollin' with Saget." Come on, nothing says "hardcore" like Danny Tanner and getting "your cootie shot." Word.

And then Paul Wall came onstage.

Fuck.

It was as if Elvis had been resurrected on the 4th of July and then drove on stage in the "Dag gum Number 3 Car!" It seemed like every one of the 6,000 troops in attendance knew every lyric to his songs, songs which I had only begrudgingly listened to snippets of while browsing celebrity playlists on iTunes. Don't get me wrong, Paul is immensely talented. I guess I just feel a little douchebaggish singing about "Grillz" and "Purple Drink" now that I have shares in a co-op and a 401K.

With the energy still building, Stu summoned "the ladies" on stage to dance. About eight soldier girls immediately got up and started backing their asses up. They backed their asses up against every one of us, the speaker system, the microphone stand - I have never seen such aggressive ass-backing-up in my entire life. Since Paul's set was the finale of the show, we were all on stage and I found myself holding a wireless mic, sporadically yelling out the few words I knew from the refrain, a la "The Beastie Boys" (it's moments like that when you realize just how shitty those silly hebes were as rappers. Seriously. Squirrels? Silly Jews.).

A couple of the ass-backing soldiers had that look in their eyes; that same look that the protagonist had in the "Nestle Knockout." Garbed head to toe in digi-cammie and gear, two previously demur white girls clearly wanted me to suck the butane straight from their Zippos. One did the 'pump up da jam' grind into my patriotically frightened package, while the other one dry humped my leg in what I realized even then as a weird inversion of sex roles. Terrified, I retreated behind the sub woofers. Once I thought I was safe again, I emerged only to find a new pair of undersexed African-American enlistees looking to make me the white crème filling in their libidinous Oreo cookie.

It made me feel guilty to think that I could fly in there (ahhhh.... Business class Lufthansa), make a grand, not go through any basic training, and fecklessly get dry humped by all the horny women on base while the grunts had to watch helplessly from down below. I felt like a fraudulent asshole. I looked at Jamie and Stu from across the stage and I think they felt the same way. We collectively decided to kind of hang in the back and stay away from the dancing perimeter. In response, the ladies put on a little lesbian-lite show for their compatriots.

One of the magical things that Paul does (something, on a different scale, I've seen Dane Cook do at the Laugh Factory) is include people in his material completely on the fly. All of a sudden in the middle of one of his most popular raps, Paul started furiously rapping about "Joey Renteria's 30th birthday party in Los Cerritos" coming up "in two weeks." Then he started rapping about "Stu the Jew" and "Billy D." and we looked at each other like blushing Japanese schoolgirls. l felt like I was something special.

After I introduced Paul to my good friend Tucker Max, Tucker was subsequently blown away when Paul freestyled about his "boy Tucker Max" at a concert in South Padre Island. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was just one of Paul's amazing party tricks and I got a shout-out too, so there. It was almost like running "game." (Yes, Debbie, that IS an impressive card trick, but Mystery does the same thing with ALL the fake-boobied ladies at the Saddle Ranch. You didn't know that? Ooohhh, that's because you have fake boobies and, ergo, are dumb.)

At the very end, we got word that one of the Marines was jonesing to get onstage and battle with Paul. You could tell that the idea wasn't exactly filling up Paul's dick, but he eventually relented, and a gawky, Italian-looking kid from Brooklyn got up, snatched my mic, turned his cap sideways, visor up all K-feddy, and started a pre-rehearsed rap about being a marine in Baghdad... I guess. Truth is I couldn't understand a goddamned word he said, but the troops went ballistic. Most were cheering, some were even rapping along, like it was a rap he had been rehearsing for weeks on end in front of the mirror, and at this point, many of his friends had it memorized through osmosis.

The marine finished his piece and nodded at Paul, who started a freestyle rap about Iraq and how it's chill "inside the wire" -- the term for being inside a military secure base-- and how dangerous it was outside the green zone with a destabilized government and.... WHAT THE FUCK?! I guess he'd been paying attention after all. I almost thought he hadn't been absorbing the socio-political vibe, being too enveloped in his long distance calls to Houston. But here he was calling them "heroes" for braving it "outside the wire." Goddammit, how do you win a rap battle while simultaneously flattering the guy?

The lightest of drizzles started, like a gay God showing his approval for a great show by spritzing us all in a fantastic mist. Once again, I planted myself somewhere inconspicuous and tried simply just to look at the scene:

I just got back from doing an MTV Asia concert featuring Vertical Horizon, Rivermaya, and Jamie Kennedy, sandwiched in between. There were nearly ten thousand people in the crowd and, for the first time in a year and a half of touring with Jamie, I was not performing. My duty for this brief engagement was simply to write jokes about Filipinos and the Filipino culture for his thirty minute spot. Also, for the first time in a year and a half of touring with Jamie, I was kind of happy not to perform. The idea of following a local band of Gypsy King- wannabe midgetinos and preceding an internationally huge band like Vertical Horizon (okay, I had never heard of them before the show) seemed daunting to say the least. Comics are NOT rock stars. Nor will they ever be, despite Dane Cook's best efforts to the contrary. I don't care how many times he sells out the Garden.

The show was at Araneta Coliseum; the same arena that hosted the legendary fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1975 that has come to be known as the "Thrilla in Manila." The place is like the Philippines version of the Staples Center or Madison Square Garden. It gets all the big events that come through Manila. In 2008, it will host the Slasher Cup, the largest cockfighting competition in the world. The 50 foot long poster for the cockfest, I shit you not, is two roosters staring at each other (a la Ali-Frazier) with smoke billowing up between them and their angry, pointed beaks. I don't know why there is smoke in the poster or where the smoke might come from when Foghorn Leghorn finally takes on Chicken Little in a fight to the death. What I can tell you is that adding fire will only make the event more cocktastic. Take that, PETA and Michael Vick haters! Eighty eight million tropical Mexicans think you can suck a cock (there will be no shortage of dead ones when this thing is all said and done, I assure you).

At least I think they think you can suck a cock. I can't be sure, as I still don't have my finger on the pulse of the culture of these tropical mud people. Shit, I've been in Manila for a couple days now and I still haven't seen the folder or the envelope from which the city derives the bulk of its notoriety. Personally, I find the best way to get the real flavor of any foreign country I am visiting is to stay as far away from the local riff-raff as possible. That's why I'm staying at the posh Sofitel Hotel; home to ex-pats, international VIPs, and iPhone wielders. When I do mingle amongst the great unwashed, though, I make sure to do it in places that are culturally significant.

So, Jamie and I are sitting at the Mall of Asia writing bits for the show (see what I did there?) and the only jokes I can come up with have the same theme: ripping apart everything Filipino. The way they pronounced their Fs and Vs, the way they like to breakdance, the way they like to eat dog. You name it, we touched on it. We came up with about fifteen new jokes and bits specifically for the show and felt pretty confident as we were escorted by police to the stadium (someone has to clear a path through the cocksuckers and all the dead bodies.)

After watching the Filo-centric Rivermaya (no, that does not mean the band was filled with puff pastry) sing pan-flutey songs of national allegiance and wave around the Filipino flag, I looked at Jamie and said, "Fuck! Don't use my bits. We'll get thrown into a ring with pissed-off chickens!" It was too late. He had two solid pages of Manila trashing literally in his hands. This had the making of a hell gig.

And then....

The fear of God and death-by-beak woke Jamie from his sometimes laconic state and he destroyed. Despite being Filipino, the crowd liked being bashed. Despite being Catholic, they liked the sex jokes. I stood there, camcorder in hand, slightly amazed and entirely jealous as my bits got round after round of applause break from the 9,000+ Manila...ians in the audience.

That was when I had a revelation. Comics are NOT rock stars. We are fucking better. The job of a comic is a million times more difficult and requires about two more pounds of ballbag than the job of a rock star. Rock stars get to hide behind instruments and pre-arranged songs and a band. Rock stars can't bomb. They can only have shows where people seem a little disappointed. Shows where only 4-5 groupies offer blow jobs. Comics subject themselves to death threats, hecklers, violence, abuse from other comics, bombing, and every other horrible thing that could ever befall a performer. And yet we still go up and do it. We can go onstage, unknown, in any part of the world, and relate personal experiences on the fly that make people laugh. Being a rock star is child's play in comparison. It's playing in a sand box with toy trucks.

Still, it is the bottom of the entertainment totem pole. Outside the industry, it's also down at the bottom. A woman will brag, "Hey, my boyfriend is a DJ!" with gusto and pride. A woman will only ADMIT, "Yeah, my boyfriend is a comic" with a sheepish grin, quickly offering the caveat, "But he's not one of those self-loathing, miserable comics." At the peak of my studliness, I have had a woman or two say, "You fuck like a rockstar!" No one has ever said, or will EVER say, "You fuck like a comic!"

My epiphany was further confirmed when the lead singer from "Vertical Horizon" told Jamie how "fucking bold" he was for being a comic and how he could never do it. He was particularly impressed that Jamie did THAT material. I don't want to include the material that DID work. Instead, I want to include here the material that was deemed too edgy and scrapped at the last minute.

If you have ever been to the Philippines or know anything about Manila or Filipino culture, it might make you laugh. If you don't, but you like jokes aimed at traditionally oppressed ethnic groups, well then get your fucking laughing shoes on cowboy because have I got some stuff fer yew!

Without further ado, here's the rejected material, all from the sick mind of yours truly:

I knew I only had two or three minutes before I was corralled and gestured to and barked at, so I just stopped in the dirt parking lot and looked around, studying a terrain I knew I would never see again, consciously telling my brain to take stock of everything I sensed and find a way to cram it into the memory pockets of my temporal lobes. The setting sun was just about to dip into the desert and the breeze seemed to come out of hiding from underneath its sandy carpet. It whipped around the sounds of distant (but hearty) laughter and circling vultures. An insect seemingly composed of nothing but legs crawled over the front of my left combat boot. It looked like a caricature of an insect. Like something out of a Chernobyl dump site or Men In Black. Apparently, it had shit to do on the other side of the parking lot. I could barely make out the scent of charcoal as troops we would never meet cooked up barbecue at various spots around the base. In an ironic visual doppelganger, a column of silent black smoke rose far off on the horizon, somewhere outside the wire. If an exploded bomb was the source of the smoke, the sound got lost somewhere in the sweep of the wind. None of the troops seemed to take notice of the billowing funnel, and I pointed it out to Stu, who just shook his head, concentrating on the tendrils of his own personal plume issuing forth from his Camel light.

"LET'S GO, GUYS!"

It was Katrina. Simultaneously steadfast and soft.

The bus ride to Camp Liberty was remarkably and uncharacteristically silent. The FIDM whore catastrophe, the crooked dick fiasco, and the unofficial Official Ban of the Nestle Knockout (I told everyone separately and sotto voce, like a gossip girl) sobered us up immeasurably. None of us were sure exactly what the bejesus we were allowed to talk about anymore. I thought about my upcoming set and found myself butted up against the same fears I had in Kuwait. Should I be family friendly? COULD I be? Scared off from sexual and racial subject matter, I found myself devoid of a closer and conversational fodder. Is it a testament to my shallowness, my stupidity, both, or something else altogether? Why was I such a dirty, racist, classless motherfucker? Madame Dawes and Herr Dawes raised me good, right?

People shifted in the stiff seats of the shortbus. Paul picked his nose and talked on the phone to his wife (his cell phone bill from the trip had to have been larger than the GNP of Costa Rica), and everyone else either slept or listened to iPods. It was like a couple's bedroom after a fight, when the old "I'm just tired" chestnut is used to convince the other party they are just sleepy, not tense, hurt, or on the edge of apoplectic rage. "Safety," Casper offered in now smelly silence. I punched him hard anyway. What was he going to do? Dance me in the face?

Although I had already popped my cherry with my first armed audience, I was nervous about the Camp Liberty show. Tracy's thinly veiled threat/caution/recommendation was still stumbling around my brain, trying to find a place to sit comfortably. I have a lot of "purple" material, I thought, am I in danger of pissing off and isolating troops and ruining my chances for a repeat visit with the USO if I give in to the dark side!?

My manager has been trying for years to mold my comic abilities into saleable, cookie-cutter form in the hopes of manufacturing a sitcom career. Unfortunately for him, my inner child can't help gravitating towards the stuff that either puckers the crowd's collective asshole or results in a death threat (two to date--allegedly the only comic other than Andrew Dice Clay to get a death threat delivered directly to Jamie Masada, owner of the LA Laugh Factory). I have also been fired as the lead in two different plays because that same inner child hates being told what to fucking do. And here I was, potentially in trouble again, because of that motherfucking brat. I was starting to think that maybe my inner child wears a helmet and drools on his coloring books. Still, even though I recognized my petulant immaturity, it didn't free me from the familiar sense of emotional claustrophobia the "rules" were giving me; the same claustrophobia I developed as a child when my brothers thought the ultimate lark was to pin me down and fart on my face. I was pinned, the fart was pending, and my options were to throw a fit or lay still, stoically, and take it. If I threw a fit, I might get beaten down and perhaps subjected to a more painful pin and longer duration of poot inhalation--this time maybe with the stamp of an anus grind. If I didn't do anything, I had to live with the fact that I was a bitch to his bottom any time he pleased. Either way, it sucked and I could never force myself to be zen about it. Tracy's words were sitting on my soul and beefing SBD's.

As we were about to arrive, Tracy suddenly piped up: "Hey guys, there are a few Navy SEALS who want to take you out shooting tonight, so if you're interested after the show, let me know."

"Shooting where?"

"Wherever they want to take you."

"Fuck yeah" was the general consensus, and we all disappeared into our own private worlds about what we might be shooting at. I secretly feared they would take us on some meth-induced commando mission with them for shits and giggles.

Heavily armed and extra dark chocolate-skinned Africans manned the posts coming in to the new camp. They were humorless and relentless; inspecting the bus, scouring our faces, and examining all of the documents twice. Originally, I didn't know why these posts weren't manned by US troops, but now I got it: these mercenaries for hire would show no favoritism, no partiality, and no mercy. Everyone was a threat until proven otherwise.

When we pulled in, I almost couldn't believe what I saw.

What question should you never ask on a first date?

They gave me 500 words and I used every single fucking one of them! Check out my response over at Savvymiss.com and figure out what you've been doing wrong all these years.

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