Happy MLK Whats Up Day
As some of you may know, I haven’t been online a lot recently because I’m currently on the road with fellow comedian John Mulaney. We’re performing at a bunch of Midwestern colleges; places like St. Joseph’s College in beautiful downtown Rensselaer, Indiana (funny aside: didja know “Rensselaer” is the German word for “methlab?”). But I have to admit, The Road is fucking hard, you guys. It’s seriously so cold outside. Like, it hasn’t gotten above single digits. Plus, everything is covered in ash and all we have to eat is canned peaches. John has done a great job this trip keeping my spirits up while he struggles to push our grocery cart through the muck towards the sea, but sometimes in the mornings I hear him coughing up blood, and it makes me scared. I can’t face these cannibals by myself.
JK! It’s been a lot fun. For me, the highlight of the trip thus far was two nights ago, when we walked into North Central College’s Student Activities Center in Napersville, Illinois. The doors of the facility were decorated with drawings celebrating Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Adorably racist drawings. It said they were made by third graders asked to summarize MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, but a part of me thinks that maybe they were actually done by the students of NCC. We’ll never know for sure. No matter what, Dr. King’s dream will live on through these pictures, dissolving in and out as my computer’s screen saver until the end of time.
What’s up, indeed.
Well, no one likes sitting in the back of a roller coaster.
His real dream is white superman? What? Was he having a nightmare?
I don’t think he saw the world in terms of olives OR anchovies. I think MLK saw the world as one big, delicious supreme pizza.
Kids draw the darndest things. (Darndest means insensitive, right? For reals though, how the fuck did those pictures make it out of a classroom? Who is teaching American History to these little monsters, and is like “Olives or Anchovies? That’s an interesting interpretation, Bobby. Very good! I’m sending that one over to the college.” A Nazi-lady, that’s who.)
PS: If you’re in New York, you should go to this tonight. It’s our one-year anniversary.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Kids do say the darndest(most insensitive yet funny) things. The little buggers! This is kind of off subject, but it is MLK day, and this has been kind of (persistently and incessantly) bothering me…at Wal-Mart, they sell these WM store brand scoop shaped corn chips, and they call them “Diggers”…aside from the obvious potential misinterpretation of the word spoken aloud, the font is such that if you cover just a millimeter of the bottom of the “D”, it looks like something, er um, really bad. At first it was delightful and funny, and I had an empty bag taped to my fridge so I could point it out and ponder about who makes the names for Wal-Mart products, and don’t they run them by some kind of sensitivity committee first? with anyone who would listen to me. Couldn’t they have named them “dippers”?!? But now on MLK day, I’m feeling vaguely guilty, and have put the bag in the trash. I’d like to say I’ll never buy them again, but they’re like 99 cents, and soooooo good! (I just said out loud to myself “Ooooh I just LOVE diggers!” and now I feel guilty again.) So Joe, if you are ever in a Wally-Wal, (if you are still in the midwest or whatever, you’ll probably be no more than half a mile from one at any given time) and you find yourself in the chip isle…check those diggers out. Bye!
March 17th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Joe- Michelle here. Last saw you doing stand-up in Philly. THAT Michelle. The Michelle of your “I have a” dreams. ahem.
Just wanted to let you know that this is the funniest thing I have ever read (be it months after you wrote it). I immediately sent it to my brother and then called to hear his reaction. He didn’t pick up.
meep moop.