revmitcz

Whether or not you believe Sarah Palin ignored the Wasila police chief's stance against footing the bill for rape kits, staying intentionally quiet about it until an Alaskan State Representative brought it to light is of little importance in the long run. You can say she had bigger fish to fry in a town of only 9,000 people, but how many fish could there possibly be?

One reason that's passed around about her inaction in the face of charging victims for rape kits (which is wholly unacceptable by any standard as far as I'm concerned), is that the kit includes the "controversial" RU486 ("morning after") pill. It might sound ludicrous to some that she would deny footing the bill over such a thing.

But, here's Palin in her own words, discussing her stance on RU486 as it applies to rape and incest :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v77WekmM8F8

So, lemme get this right. A woman is raped and impregnated by her father, and part of your "counseling session" is "you really ought to keep that baby... you don't want to upset God"? That's just fucking absurd. You're talking about, in many cases, a minor - suddenly thrust into a terrible situation that turns her whole world upside down. And you're going to ask that girl, confused and shattered, to make an adult decision on the spot about carrying an incestually conceived rape baby full term? If you think anyone is going to make a sound decision at that point in their life, under those conditions, then you're either : a fucking idiot, or a complete asshole.

Perhaps my biggest issue on her stance is when she says in the interview above "I'm one who believes that life begins at conception". WTF?

Look, I can BELIEVE the moon is made of cheese but that doesn't make it so. You can BELIEVE whatever the fuck you want - but if science steps in and says "uhh.. no" then you're just staying woefully ignorant.

"But Mitcz.." (I hear some of you thinking) "...if life doesn't begin at conception - when DOES it begin?"

Allow me to pull some science on your asses.

First and foremost, we have to ask ourselves the following questions :

Are we protective of ALL life, or just human life?
If you are protective of ALL life, then you've never stepped on a bug in your life. When driving, you swerve to avoid anything that might hit your windshield, or happen under your tires. You also don't, as in Sarah's case, go hunting and fishing and seek to try and make sure those activities are protected above all other issues in your jurisdiction.

So, we can safely say she's being protective solely of HUMAN life. That's fair, as I'm the same way, and I don't hold any ill will towards someone being protective of human life above all others.

What defines a human?
This may sound like a ridiculous question. But, let's think about it - put yourself in a position of having to explain to, say, an alien race what it is to be human. Would you say "well, we have 2 arms and 2 legs"? If so, you're including almost every mammal that ever walked the earth.

Maybe you'd say "well, opposable thumbs" - but monkeys have those, too. Decision-making abilities? Year-round fertility? Communication skills? None of these things are innately human.

If you go the route of "we can walk upright", that would discount babies up until the day they walk. That would make infanticide legal, and I'm certainly not in favor of that.

I'll quote Carl Sagan on these matters, since he wrote what I consider the "last word" on this subject :

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they're arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics--apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn't stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Other animals have advantages over us--in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought--characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That's how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Life cannot be said to begin at conception, because there is no "life", but merely firings of impulses and meetings of egg and sperm. Semen is spilled in countless billions throughout a man's life - even without their control, as in the case of nocturnal emissions. Eggs die monthly, as we're all aware. Even the meeting of those two does not guarantee a birth, as a spontaneous miscarriage is a common occurrence. You may not even know that you've had one, frankly - and it's been estimated that over 50% of all fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried (also called a "spontaneous abortion").Taking that approach, we find that brain waves which may be considered "human thought" do not begin, conservatively, until the 6th month (or, if you prefer, the beginning of the 3rd trimester). Conveniently, that's where Roe v Wade placed the limits on legal abortion except in rare cases.Interestingly, there's no mention in Der Bible about abortion. Nada. Zilch. Zip. The only mention of a fetus, in fact, is this passage from Exodus 21:22 :

"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows."

So, feel free to BELIEVE that life begins at conception, but your claims are supported by neither science nor religion. It's just you - being a pompous little shitbag.Oh, and Sarah Palin is a dumb cunt.

So, last night I went back for a 2nd performance at the Aura Nightclub. I still love that club. Though, last night had a bit of a weird vibe. Seemed some of the comedians thought so too.

First, I'll place the video, then I'll give you my "behind the scenes" shit..

CHECK IT OUT HERE ON VIMEO.

I was nervous about this gig. I don't normally get nervous. Quite the opposite, really. I sometimes wonder if I was born without stagefright. Last night's nervousness wasn't about stagefright - it was about the material.

Originally, I'd completely rewritten my "gay marriage" material from scratch. Turned it into this 5-6 minute speech, littered with some pretty angry remarks about the Bush administration, and right-wingers in general. It may have gone over pretty well, but it still needs a little touching up.

Coming back from my mother's memorial service at about 5am Weds morning, I didn't have much time to work on new material. Add in that I had a 10-hour day of background acting on Friday, I was left with even less time. All I really knew was that I wanted to wrap the whole set into one central idea, just to see if it would work. The central idea that night being, basically : throughout history, there have been many amazing people who have accomplished so much and changed the world using little more than the power of thought. Here I am, using the same tools - and all I can do is tell dick jokes for 10 minutes.

I'm not sure if that theme really came through in the set, but it was my first attempt at wrapping my entire set into a cohesive whole - so I'll take what I can get for now.

I've been thinking I should open up a little more in my comedy, and use it as a chance to get some shit off my chest. The heaviest thing on my mind right now being, of course, the recent death of my mother. How do I talk about it, and make it funny? The same way I have been when I'm talking to my friends - I focus on the awkwardness of people's reactions to the news, and to my nonchalant manner of discussing it. Getting over a thing like that - once upon a time it was my biggest fear - takes coming to grips with the reality, and taking it out of the realm of mystical and chalking it up to another of life's little events that really throws you off-course.

My mother passed away 15 minutes into Monday, Sept 15th, and Monday night I walked up onstage at the Howl at the Moon club and threw down some comedy. That Friday was my first Aura Nightclub gig with Rebels of Comedy. So, it's not like I couldn't perform under the pressure. I wanted my mom to "be there", however, and now that I've got a portion of my mom's ashes in a vial here in my room - I decided to put a small sprinkle in some kind of locket. Thankfully, there's an arts-and-crafts store across the street that had a little heart locket. My sister and I will eventually get REAL keepsake necklaces, and I'll have one that isn't so... feminine.

When I was rehearsing last night's material, every time I got to the part where I say "My mother just died. Less than 2 weeks ago", I'd follow it up with "...and it's tough, cause she means the world to me" and I'd end up with a lump in my throat, and sometimes I'd end up crying. By the time I got to Aura, I was so nervous that I'd let out that line and break down onstage, I almost didn't wanna go up. I also had about 12 people showing up just to see me, including friends-of-friends who were arriving with friends-of-friends who saw me last time and sang my praises to pull in more people. I appreciated their presence, no two ways about it. But, it was a bit more pressure than I could handle at the time.

Ultimately, I got through the line just fine - and decided at the last moment to drop the part about how much she meant (cause, really, that would go without saying and it doesn't add anything to the performance). I also decided to alter using the word "gay" to describe my locket, and instead say "faggoty" and make a joke about why i made that decision. I think that was the biggest laugh I got all night. About a minute after getting past the part that had plagued my conscience all day ("my mother died..."), my premature self-celebration made the little screen inside my head go blank and I completely forgot my set.

A little pick-me-up from my friend Vodka/Cranberry helped kickstart the gears again and got me moving along. You'll probably notice in the video that I stumble around a bit, and I'm a bit more drunk than I should have been. But, hell... I made it through the set and I'm ready to fight another day.

Upcoming Gigs..

I'm excited about next month..

Thursday, October 16th @ Shooters // 8:30pm.
NO Cover. NO drink minimum. 18 and over. FREE Parking. And it'll be intimate - only 4 comics. I'll be doing about 20 MINUTES that night.

Sunday, October 26th @ Hollywood Improv // 9:00pm
My BIRTHDAY show (well, 3 days before my birthday) - the LAST show I'll do before I turn the big 3-0. $14 Cover. FREE Parking. Great food, great night. AMAZING venue (world-famous, g'damnit). Make sure to get there EARLY! There's often a line out the door by the time 9pm rolls around, so you should try and get there before 8:30pm at the latest.

Got a call today from a casting agency, asking me to play a background actor on (show name removed) as a "Serbian thug". I didn't audition for this role, and I was pretty well done w/that casting agency. I wasn't about to call them up to ask for more work. However, I got a call saying the casting director saw my photo and said "THAT GUY!".

The rep from the casting company asked that I shave my head again (my hair's grown to about 1/2 inch now) and keep a 5 o'clock shadow to match my headshots.

I thought to myself "WTF does a Serbian thug look like?". When I have those questions, I ask Google. In this case, I asked Google images.

Now I'm a bit freaked out. Here's 2 images from the first 2 pages of results for "Serbian thug" on Google images :





Now, compare that to this :



So, apparently, I'm perfect for playing a Serbian thug. It's good news for me, though, cause I could use the money.

Last night's gig at the Aura Nightclub was a comedian's dream. GREAT crowd. GREAT comics. GREAT host, high-energy, the room was large and comfortable. Everything was setup for maximum funny.

Big ups to TK (here's his myspace page) for booking me there, and for keeping the funny going once he got up there to close out the show. It's always nice when the host AND the comic running the room are both funny as shit. And, they were.

I've got another gig at Aura next weekend, Saturday. 7:30pm. $10 cover. FREE Parking. I highly recommend checking it out, and not just cause I'll be there.

I'm heading out to Colorado for my mom's memorial service, so I'll be away for a few days. In the meantime, enjoy this video of my performance last night. I even subtitled it for you, in case the audio isn't so clear.

Check it out over at VIMEO.com

Got into a discussion recently about serial killers. These conversations inevitably end up as a sort of trivia session about what a given serial killer said/did that few people know about. I've probably spent too much of my life researching these things, so I tend to do pretty well in those situations.

Here's a few "for instance" trivia notes :

- Richard Ramirez never broke into a single home. In every case, he simply found an unlocked door and walked in. Even at the height of the investigation, where SoCal residents were told about his crimes and asked to be cautious, he could almost always find one unlocked door in a house.

- Richard Chase also never broke into a house. He took locked doors as a sign that "[he] was not welcome there".

- Jeffrey Dahmer was pulled over just after his first murder, but the cop took his overwhelming nervousness as him being "a very polite boy, scared of getting in trouble" and let him off with a warning, without checking the trunk that was stuffed with freshly dismembered corpse.

- Charles Manson was considered a worthwhile musician with an interesting message by Brian Wilson (of The Beach Boys) and a producer friend of Brian's who said "I was enthralled with the whole Manson package" and had wanted to cut an album with him. As a matter of fact - Brian Wilson even let Manson and "the family" stay at his home for several months to work on their album.

- John Wayne Gacy was given Secret Service clearance by Rosalyn Carter (who autographed a photo of the two of them together), and Ted Bundy was given the Key to the City of Seattle after helping promote numerous political campaigns.

Few people know that Jeffrey Dahmer's own father wrote a book about raising little Jeffrey. The title of that book was "A Father's Story".

Other titles considered :

- "Don't look at me. Have you seen that mother of his? Talk about a piece of work!"

- "Maybe letting him perform taxidermy on small animals at 6 years old was a bad idea, in hindsight"

- "I'm Pretty Sure the Wife Lied To Me About Being the Father"

- "Let's Talk About Hitler's Dad While We're At It"

- "Oops. (and Other Tales of Parenting Mishaps)"

- "How To Make A Serial Killer (and Become a NYT Bestselling Author When Writing About It)"

- "Next Time, I'll Do Better"

- "Hey, Your Kid's No Prize, Either"

- "Why Abortion Should Remain Legal"

You're likely to see a few of these mini-posts pop up as I work on material for some upcoming gigs (including one tomorrow night) and need a break to write ridiculous shit.