Yet Another Short Story About Me

People sometimes ask why I complain all the time. They usually mistake my chronic whinny lamentations as genuine unhappiness. This isn’t the case. It’s just my super power. Some people are math geniuses. Some are able to rebuild almost anything. I can deconstruct and bemoan anything.

It started out with my decade of depression. Depression means “to lower” or “reduce”. Usually, it manifests in “lowered” levels of happiness. It could also manifest as decreased energy, motivation, or appetite. One of the ways it manifested in me was a general irritability. While the depression has long since been gone, the irritability has remained. Plus, when I was unhappy, I had a lot of reasons to complain.

I idolized comics like George Carlin, Adam Carolla, Lewis Black, and Dennis Miller. All of whom are (or were) rant comics. So that was the style of comedy to which I was drawn. I loved how they could go on these long winded tirades about everything from parking enforcement, to politics, to shoe laces. It didn’t matter how important or unimportant the topic seemed. They had an opinion about it, and were going to tell you.

Years later, when I moved to Seattle, one of the valets at the hotel at which I worked, would ask me to rant about random topics. Like he would suggest something like… puppies, or whatever, just to see if I could complain about it.

Yes, I could. Thus my infamous “five minutes about coffee makers”. I didn’t realize this at the time, but Adam Carolla had since left Loveline and started his own morning show. In that show, he had a bit called “What Can’t Adam Complain About”. Technically, I started doing it first, but it was inspired by his rants, and he’s more famous, so what could I do anyway.

This was the beginning of my comedy. This valet made me realize that people enjoyed my rants. Maybe it wasn’t the content. Maybe it wasn’t the delivery. Maybe it was just the fact that I could get so fixated and aggravated by such menial things. The point was that I was entertaining them. They were enjoying it. They wanted more. It became a daily ritual. Every day, I’d come in to work early, do ten minutes on whatever topic was chosen, then go clock in.

A couple of years later, I decided to try standup. In front of a crowd. With a mic and everything. It even had the brick background. Just like real comedy clubs. It was a three minute set and I BOMBED. Oh. My. God. I sucked. I did two minutes on… weed or something. I can’t remember. Nothing but silence from the crowd. Like, I would have been fine with some chuckles, but silence is just as bad as being booed.

I ended, however, with my Keanu Reeves impression. This was a solid minute of non stop laughter. I almost didn’t have time to finish it before my three minutes of fame was over. After the show, two people from the audience shook my hand and said I did a good job. One person told me that I was holding the mic too far from my mouth. Maybe they didn’t laugh because I was too quiet.

In any case, I realized that my rant style, doesn’t really work for open mics. It’s far too short. Plus most people go to standup shows for multiple rapid fire punchlines, not long wordy diatribes. This website, however, is perfect for it. I can post my tangential tirades. I can post them on social networks to get fans. This hasn’t really happened yet, but soon.

So why do I rant? Because I can. Because I’m great at it. Because people enjoy it.