Straightjackets

I broke down and upgraded my cable service again. I needed to get HBO back so that I watch the True Blood season opener last night. I also got my MLB network back so I don’t have to deal with ESPN and their obsession with basketball that is not even in season any more.

The True Blood opener was just OK for me. It ended poorly last night. But that won’t keep me from watching it. There usually are funny lines to quote from each show also, but this one didn’t seem to have one. I hope this isn’t a sign of bad things to come.

My busy season for show bookings is now pretty much over. The last three shows from which I just returned all went extremely well.
There were back-to-back 3am shows for graduation projects. The first one was in a giant indoor sports complex in NJ. This was a gig for a booking agent and it was the first one that I did for this particular company.
My show was preceded by an entertainer named Michael DuBois. He bills himself as the “Solo Circus.” During the evening he had been doing magic tricks around the complex. But for his act opening for me he juggled. The kids didn’t seem to be too impressed with a juggling act though even though this dude managed to juggle SEVEN balls at once. In my 49 years I have never seen someone juggle seven balls before.
The kids reaction I thought was polite. I was apparently the most impressed in the place. Some people kept looking back at me because I was applauding…rather loud I guess; but the guy was great.
He closed his show by escaping from a straight jacket while riding a unicycle. I thought this was standing ovation material. But no, it was regular applause.
This is a guy who has done the Disney cruise and has appeared on the Leno show.
I figured that I was doomed for my show.


Prior to my show I see an elderly Asian man standing behind a small podium on wheels. He had a bunch of paper plates on the top of it and a booklet of drawings. Kids were going through the book and selecting a picture and he would fold the paper plates over and over and over again until they were real small. Then he started cutting the folded plate. In less than a minute he would unfold his chopped up plate to reveal these amazing works of paper art.
I found out that he had worked for Disney at Epcot for 10 years.

Now I figured that I was toast. I have a 330 am start for a group of kids who are now getting tired and were seemingly uninspired by these two particular entertainers who both were amazing to me.

I end up with the crowd standing and cheering throughout my show and at the end of it.

I have to say that I was sort of shocked. Relieved and extremely happy, but really surprised.

I was talking to my booking agent and remarked about the two gentlemen to whom I referred above. I told him that I was flattered to be working in the same lineup as they were and was told in return that my show easily ranked right along with them, “if not more so.”

That really made me feel good.

The following night was in Elmira, NY. I was doing two different shows those next two nights both for another booking agency for which I was working the first time.
Each one of these were better than the one in NJ, so it was a successful week for me and important knowing that these two agencies will bring in more work for me.

In MLB the Washington Nationals replaced Jim “The Quitter” Riggleman with Davey Johnson, who managed my team, the Mets, to its last World Series victory in 1986. This one yanks my chain for sure. Why Johnson is not in the Mets organization to begin with is beyond my level of comprehension. But now he is managing one of our division competitors? This makes me sick. We are stuck with a guy who has no real success (Terry Collins) and a team that has been perennial losers is now not only in front of the Mets, but have a successful manager at the helm.

This is not good.

Jonathan Danks, pitcher for the White Sox, is out for a little while after straining an oblique muscle while throwing a pitch. This is a guy who had a baseball blasted off of his head a week before and stayed in the game.

There is STILL talk in NY about trading Jose Reyes. Here is a guy who is in the top 2 right now in an MVP award vote, if it were held today. NY actually has Met fans who think that trading him now while he is hot would land them “something of value.” HE IS OF VALUE BY HIMSELF YOU MORONS! If he is traded because of his salary concerns for the next few years, this means by default that you are trading him for people who will be of lesser value or for a bunch of “prospects” who are unknown at best. These deals rarely work out so well. We, again, are talking about a shortstop which is one of the toughest positions on the field. If he was 32 or 33 years old and having this type of season, perhaps we could talk. But he just turned 28. The chance that he still has great years ahead of him is much higher now than 5 years from now. He has to be kept.

I’ve been a Met fan all my life. Trading away a player like this would make me wonder if this team is any longer worth my loyalty. This is a move that will help them lose, not win.
The Nationals are trying to win. They are closer to me. Davey Johnson is nearly a hero to me. It would start to make sense to start to root for that team although that ex-Phillie Jayson Werthless is on it, if the Mets are going to “cash in” as some dimwit NJ sportswriter just posted somewhere I won’t even mention.

By the end of this week the baseball season will be half-way finished already. Good grief, where is the time going?

Done

Oil Wrestling

Its road trip time as I head for shows on three consecutive nights. A decent May and June for me, work-wise, will come to an end.

Summer is normally a slow time of the year for me. The down time that I have gives me a lot of time to think of new things to do and that thought process is already underway since this summer will be even slower than usual. This year anything new will come under the umbrella of the Marshcast project where there are two shows running currently, although not in the same place currently.

I would like to mention that I try not to make this particular blog about myself. I generally find that rather narcissistic when others do that. My intention was to jot down some thoughts about things that interest me at any current time and use it as a networking tool also. However, I actually do have people ask me questions about my time as an entertainer and personal questions as well, so I slip some of that in here to try to knock off a couple of things at the same time.
I am very grateful and honored that anyone likes anything that I do so I don’t want to seem like I am ignoring anyone, so I answer some of those things here.

Hey, if you know any women who are interested in doing some vegetable oil wrestling, please send them my way.

That was sort of out of left field, wasn’t it? Well, I’m actually serious. We, and when I say we I am talking about our Dungeon of Manlove show cast, are planning a fund-raising event for some time later this year. We would like to raise money for breast cancer (because who doesn’t like boobs, right?) and vegetable oil wrestling seemed like a logical thing to do.
We are open to other suggestions…I guess…for such an event. Actually our main attractions will be a concert. We have a verbal commitment from the first local band that we asked the other night on our show, Altar of Dagon. I’m sure we’ll get a few others easily enough.
We are looking for a decent-sized venue around here where I live in Delaware though. That is a little tougher to find.
Also, if you have any other ideas for some things we could do in this fund-raiser send me a note or make a comment here. We’d actually like to make this a major event.

We are also on a continuous search for people who like to become involved in our network. We are looking for a variety of people to do a variety of things. We are searching for show talent; those who would like to become part of any of the shows we are producing or would like to produce, those who would like to work behind the scenes writing, editing, or producing, or those who have sales skills to help us develop the business side of the project.
Please contact me directly if you have any interest in any of the above.

It was talent show night last night on TV for me; America’s Got Talent and The Voice.
AGT showcased an 11-year old girl from Alaska last night who did an Alicia Keys song that pretty much blew everyone away. And it had a cross dresser who will join her in the next round of auditions in Las Vegas.
I was talking with a friend about AGT the other day. He said he thought that this show should keep singers off of the show. While singers certainly have talent, there are other shows which are just singing competitions. Groups and individuals who have other kinds of acts like magicians, ventriloquists, pole dancers and the like always seem to lose to singers at the end of the show anyway.
I had to agree to an extent up to the point where if they are going to use the word “talent” it’s tough to then exclude singers who are naturally “talented” in that way.

On “The Voice,” there were 8 singers remaining; four get the boot tonight, one from each “team.” If you have seen this show, calling a winner here is tough. All of the remaining 8 are talented and it’s simply going to be a matter of who has developed more fans. My favorites, of course, are the hot girls.
Adam Levine, judge and lead singer from Maroon 5, brought his band to the show last night to debut a new single. It was called something like “Moves Like Jagger.”

Ok, I was a fan of Maroon 5’s first album, but the second one was terrible and so was this song. To make it worse, chubby, white-haired Christina Aguilera joined him on stage, did a couple of those vocal runs with her hands waving in the air and ruined it even more.
Had that act been on the AGT stage, Peirs Morgan would have buzzed them right off stage. I know that I would have pulled the plug on that one.
Blake Shelton, of country music fame, also performed his hit called “Honey Bee,” which I had never heard before. He was just fine. I mention this strictly to make it known that I don’t want to just criticize everything that isn’t God’s gift to the entertainment world. I’m not even a country-music fan; I am, however, a Maroon 5 fan, and the country song was better.

I recently cut back my cable TV service to save money but it’s going to be tough to keep it off soon. HBO’s True Blood returns this weekend and I love that show. Also in the fall Dexter returns to Showtime, and that is one of my favorite shows as well.

So I guess I’ll have to find a way to make that extra $60 a month to pay that bill. If you are looking for a unique way to entertain your friends or co-workers, drop me a line!

Done.

Gotta Bribe Them

Suddenly the hottest team in baseball is the Washington Nationals! They have an 8-game winning streak and coupled with the Marlins 9 game losing streak, they have found themselves tied for third place with the Mets.
How, exactly, they have done this is a mystery. They are hitting .236 as a team and exactly as much as Jayson Werth, the Nats 18-million dollar star, is hitting.

It won’t last but its nice to see.

At this time of year if a baseball team is 10 games out of first place, it’s pretty much over for them. Not to say that it is impossible to climb out of that hole; it’s been done before. But with the trading deadline approaching soon, these teams are approached to make deals with teams near the top which are looking to solidify their rosters for the stretch run. This would include the Orioles, Cubs and Astros right now with the Nats, Mets and Padres in that range also each 9.5 games back.

If the season were to end today there would be a 3-way tie for the NL Wild Card with the Braves, Cardinals and Diamondbacks. It would be interesting to see the season end like that, although I believe there is a tie-breaker before a playoff game to eliminate one of the teams.
I had been initially opposed to breaking up the NL and AL into three divisions each and the creation of the wild card team for the playoffs. But it does keep interest high towards the end of the regular season and we have certainly seen a great deal of critical last-day-of-the-season games. I have heard talk of further expansion and re-alignment but no details of such. The AL has 14 teams and the NL 16. It would make sense, I suppose to add two to the AL and breakdown the leagues into 4 divisions each. The winners of each division would simply be the playoff entrants.

The countdown to Derek Jeter’s 3000^th hit is on hold as he is currently sitting on the DL. Jeter is now just 6 hits shy of the milestone.

Overall this season has been a little boring for me. There isn’t anyone on pace to do anything spectacular. With pitchers this will never happen again until they are allowed to pitch more than 5 innings at a time.
With hitters, no one, other than Jeter, is really doing anything earth shattering. The next huge milestone to watch is with Alex Rodriguez as he approaches Ken Griffey and Willie Mays on the all-time HR list. With 626 he needs 4 more to tie Griffey with Mays’ mark of 660 next to reach.
Rodriguez is still just 35. Barry Bonds retired with 762 homeruns. A-Rod would have to play 6 more years and average 25 a year to reach that mark, which seems reasonable.
Jim Thome needs 7 more dingers to reach 600 now. While I would never have thought that Thome was a hall-of-fame caliber player I would imagine that the 600 HR mark would put him in there. He, as far as I know, was never accused of being a roid boy so, given that; I’d have to give him a vote, if I had one. He is also now 2^nd overall in career strikeouts to Reggie Jackson trailing him by about 180. But since he does have more HR’s than Jackson and Jackson is in the HOF, I think the case can definitely be made for Thome now.

I had one of those early morning graduations party shows the Friday into Saturday in Glassboro, NJ. It was a 4am start and it was a return performance from last year.
The school for which I did this show in NJ really goes all out for their graduation party.
First the party is a couple of weeks after graduation and they had over 400 kids attend. This one is held at a neighboring college’s recreation center. It was started over 15 years ago when two local teachers responded to the deaths of a couple of teenagers in their region involved in accidents on graduation party nights.
So how does a school get over 400 kids to show up at an all-night alcohol-free party two weeks after graduation? Well, every kid who attends gets a $25 WaWa gift card, so they literally bribe the kids. But, at the college, there is food and drinks all night, a DJ, billiards, ping-pong, inflatable attractions; use of the swimming pool, and then my show closes out the event at the college. All of the kids are then bussed back to the high school for a continental breakfast where prizes are then drawn. Prizes include some computers and TV’s; a $1500 cash award and the grand prize was a new car…well, a used car, but a car nonetheless.

Overall this event costs over 50 thousand dollars. The money is raised over the course of the year and while I am not sure if the district contributes anything or not, I believe that simply most of it is raised by the parents and teachers who run the show every year.
They started planning next year’s event while this year’s event still hadn’t taken place yet.
People who no longer have children in the school help put on this party every year and that includes the former chairman of the party for the past 7 years who, while no longer the chairman, still is involved with it.
I’ve been to over 100 of these things now and this one is clearly the best one that I have seen. Keeping in mind that one would think that most of these kids would be at the beach or someplace similar, its truly a testimony to what they have built that so many of these kids attend this party every year.

Hmmm…..no talk of politics or bleach blonde hair. That’s good so now I’m

Done.

 

The Scales of Justice are Tipped

Have you ever entered a contest of some sort before where your submission of yours was judged by other people?

I would assume that if you didn’t win such a particular contest and you took a look at other entrants, perhaps you thought to yourself, “Now I KNOW mine was better than that, how the heck did he/she win over mine?”

We all expect judges to be fair and impartial, right? The word judge might even conjure up some sort of image of the scales of justice with each side of scale in the picture at an even level. Sure, we know that there are unscrupulous people who get those jobs now and then, but when those are weeded out, don’t we normally feel pretty confident standing up in front of a panel of judges?

Even with the best of intentions, just because we are all just simply wired differently, results of judging a competition are subject to a plethora (was waiting for a great time to use that word) of personal criteria and biases of any particular judge.

There was a fantastic example of this on The Hair the other evening (and you know what show I mean.)
First, I should say that Christina Aquilera toned down her hair the other night and looked pretty hot. She didn’t have that florescent red lipstick on either…but this is beside the point.
Each of the four judges are also coaches of four singers each. When the competition was pared down to 16 finalists, Aquilera and Blake Shelton’s team all sang to move on to the next round. Results of that evening’s competition were held the other night. One singer was voted to get “saved” by viewers and the judges saved one more, eliminating two singers each.
Now that did have to be a tough thing for the judges/coaches to do but the picks were rather interesting.
Left standing on Aquilera’s team, ironically considering all of the fuss that I make about her hair, were two heavy women with absolutely no hair. Friggin bald as could be.
Shelton had two men and two girls on his team. One of the men was a country singer, and clearly someone who is going to record something somewhere. The other guy was kind of a country-rock sort of guy. The two girls were both rather demure and slight in build. The viewers selected one of the girls and Shelton chose the other one, the latter clearly a shocking pick even though she belonged in the final 16 to start.

Watching them all on stage really made it look like each judge/coach simply had a personal preference for a certain type of singer. It was as profound a display of what I started off this piece saying that I have ever seen in something like this.

Beverly McClellan - team Christina

Frenchie Davis - team Christina (booted from American Idol for "racy" pictures on the Net)

Dia Frampton - team Blake (I'd pick her too!)

Xenia - team Blake

Call it bias, prejudice, personal preference, or whatever you want to call it though, it’s just the way things work. We see it all the time. We try to run from it, chastise it, demonize it and regulate it, but its all to no avail.

It is what is it, it be what it be.

Speaking of B's, congratulations to the Boston Bruins for winning their first Stanley Cup since 1972 and Bobby Orr. Their win sent the fans of their opponents, the Vancouver Canucks, into the streets for a barbeque or two roasting marshmellows on burning cars and store fronts. One would have thought that the Detroit Pistons had just won another NBA title.

Done

Wanna See My Wiener?

With more activity on our podcast show, the Dungeon of Manlove, and the planning of a couple of other projects, I haven’t had a great deal of time to write a whole lot here.

As more people are becoming involved with our show and guests spinning through the door, all sorts of ideas are being developed and more time is spent there than here.

There is no doubt that there is strength in numbers and while I am an admirer of rugged individualism, how our team numbers improve what we do is fantastic. Now keep in mind that I don’t necessarily mean that what we are doing is fantastic; that is quite subjective. But to us, the way we develop things makes our material much better.

We make use of a private Facebook group page to brainstorm and plan all week. Someone will toss out an idea on the wall there. Sometimes it’s as simple as talking about bringing in someone to promote some music. Sometimes the idea stands alone. Most of the time after someone posts an idea it begins to get molded on the page. Some things are added or switched or subtracted and it takes a final shape. There are times the final idea doesn't resemble the original one. 

It is truly fun and if you don’t mind explicit language and ideas, do take a listen. Remember that we do everything simply to have fun.


Some baseball. The Cleveland Indians started this season 30-15. They then proceeded to go 4-15 and become just another average team and are now just tied for first with the Tigers. This sport is so humbling that way. I do believe that my pre-season predictions are basically close to being correct. The one team that has slipped in to the mix is the Brewers, who have now tied the Cardinals in the NL Central.
Some place else I predicted that the Red Sox Adrian Gonzalez would become the AL MVP and he is living up to my expectations there. In the NL I predicted that Albert Pujols would be the MVP again. He is not quite there right now. I would give that nod to Matt Kemp from the Dodgers. But I wouldn’t count Albert out just yet. He is still amongst the leaders in HR’s and RBI’s and hitting .280 or so. It’s just not an Albert sort of year at this point. There is still plenty of season left though, and this is one of the best hitters in our era, so look out NL.
I thought that Cole Hamels from the Phillies might have a true breakout season in the middle of all those quality pitchers on the team. So far, it looks that way. Hamels is now 8-2 with a 2.58 era. He is averaging over a strikeout per inning and his WHIP leads the majors at .95. (WHIP = walks and hits per innings pitched; the lower the number, the better.) The WHIP numbers are amazing. Its tough to lose if you’re tossing up numbers like that.

While power production in baseball has taken a bit of a dip, there are currently 35 players who are hitting .300 or better (all of whom have enough plate appearances to qualify for the leader boards.) That’s probably about 15 or so more than normal. No one is even remotely close to threatening to be the next .400 hitter though. Jose Reyes is leading at .342. From years of watching this, we can probably expect the leaders in both leagues to end up hitting in the .320’s. That .400 mark I have never seen in baseball. Most of us have never seen it happen since it was 1941 when it happened last.
I think the only way we will see it happen is if someone takes Ted William’s cryogenically frozen remains and clones him in the future when that will be legal to do.

Would you want to have yourself cloned? I think I would. That wouldn’t mean that it would actually be me in the sense that I would be conscious of the whole new life, but I think it would be cool. Since I don’t have any children, I could leave all my stuff to my new me.


Ok, I just can’t resist saying something political.
If you were a US Congressman or woman, would you send a picture of your wiener to anyone, ever? Leave alone the fact that perhaps you were married. Would you still even do that? Who, with any sense whatsoever, would subject themselves to potentially getting blackmailed as a member of Congress, most importantly?

I love how the left in this country claim that Sarah Palin is the dumbest politician out there. Yet Anthony Wiener does something so completely moronic and not one thing is mentioned about his "smarts."
Speaking of Sarah Palin; if she is so freaking dumb and so incompetent, why in the world is the left and the leftist media in this country SO obsessed with her?
I will tell you why. Because they know that if she got the Republican nomination that she would be the first female President of the US. That goes against the leftist narrative that Republicans are just a bunch of sexists. What gets me about this is that Palin should be the left’s dream candidate. When I was growing up I witnessed the rise of the feminist movement in the country. I saw women burning bras!
We were told by the feminist movement that a woman could do everything from being a mother to being a leader. Well…isn’t that what Sarah Palin is exactly? She is a mother of 5 children and became a governor of a state.
So what is the issue then with her on the left? It can only be that she is pro-life, religious, and anti big government. Because everything else that she is, as a woman, is exactly what we were told were goals for women.
So…yes another so…we have the National Organization for Women (NOW) basically doing whatever they can to keep Sarah Palin OUT of office yet they say absolutely NOTHING about someone who resembles a sexual predator to GET OUT of office.
So…to conclude the so’s…the NOW really just shows that they are just a leftist organization created and maintained to advocate for fellow leftists and a pro-choice agenda. They care not about the actual advancement of women in this country unless they toe the leftist line.
The hypocrisy is mind boggling.

What the media tried to do to her this past week I cannot recall them ever doing to any other potential Presidential candidate,  especially our current President. The NY Times and Washington Post solicited outside volunteers to help them go through 25000 emails sent and received by Palin when she was the governor.
Now had there been anything earth shattering in there we would now be reading about this day in and day out about her in these papers. But, something odd happened...they didn't find anything of the sort. So, what is the result? Is there ONE decent article written that says, "hey, perhaps we were wrong about this woman." Or is there any sort of acknowledgement that this was way overboard here? No.
This is the same media that tells anyone who wants to dig into President Obama's past that the "Fascist propaganda attack machine" is at it again and to worry about the future, not the past.

Let's not make a mistake here. While I would vote for Palin over Obama, she isn't in my top 5 of favorites for me. My personal 2 or 3 choices are not involved in the race this year...yet, anyway.
But if more women aren't going to stand up and protest what the left and the leftist media are trying to do to Sarah Palin, I'm not keeping my freaking mouth shut about it. I know what happened with my mother when she was in the working world and trying to advance up the ladder. I will not let that happen on my watch. And even if only 5 people are reading this...ok, well not too much is getting accomplished, but at least I'm not just sitting in the back yard with my head down eating grass like a sheep.

Done

Swinging in the Heat

Global warming has returned to the area. NOT coincidentally, we are told, so has summer. Pay no attention to the calendar that says its summer time. The reason it is hot is because of YOU…and YOU…and your filthy habit of trying to live comfortably while you are alive.

I’ve re-written this page 8 times in the last couple of days. It was all political. I have only left that first paragraph. I am definitely saving the politics for a podcast show. You have been spared.

I am, clearly, a fan of talent contest shows on TV.

My beef with a couple of them is the fake audience noise. Its really condescending to me. Feel free to edit as you need to do so but try to maintain integrity while doing so. I was never a fan of laugh tracks on comedy shows for that same reason. If a joke is funny, we'll laugh at home; that is all that matters. Live studio audiences that laugh are an enhancement, but not the canned laughing. Same thing with talent shows; if the acts are good I would like to see genuine applause.

These things do hold my interest because I am an entertainer but most importantly I do love watching people who otherwise would find it very, very difficult to get a chance for such notoriety to get access to as many people as watch these shows.

There have been some great personal stories in the history of these shows.
Of course if someone is very talented they are going to get discovered anyway, but even those who clearly have such skills still do show up on these sets.
It sort of made me wonder why. There are hundreds of thousands of people and acts who participate in shows like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Got Talent, The Hair (you know what I mean) and others. The chances of even getting in front of the on-air judges are slim. Is it really just all about getting on those TV shows? Why, exactly, given the odds? I suppose that even for many very talented people who sing and dance, a spot on TV is even difficult for them. How many singers and dancers do we generally see on TV besides in the backgrounds? Winning one of them, or being in the group of finalists will clearly provide a great boost for one's career. Since there is not much financial risk involved it's like buying a lottery ticket for sure; if one doesn't reach the finals it would be disappointing but not life threatening. But get into that final round and then the return on the investment is enormous.

I do have to admit that I would like to tryout for a show. And I even had my own, as local as it was, for about 10 years. My routines can’t fit in the 90 seconds that are given to these contestants. The best that I could do would be some mentalism demonstrations, but even they take time to set up and I could get ONE done in that amount of time.
The one I would really like to do though is Survivor. Do not ask me why I would want to sit outside for as long as 39 days in the heat, the storms and the mud getting bitten by bugs without running water or soap. There is something about the strategic part of that game that intrigues me. On this show is where I could employ things I know about hypnosis to my advantage. I could, for example, let my teammates know that I can use hypnosis to have them feel less hungry. I would actually do a few of those sessions clean so people would learn to trust me. Then, for those who took to the induction successfully, I would plant other suggestions that would keep them from taking me out of the game.
Most of those people have the type of mistrusting personality that would make it tough, but it would so be worth it to try.
Even after 22 seasons of Survivor now, it remains one of the top shows and still has thousands of people applying to be on it.

But I hate walking out to the mailbox to get my mail on these really hot days so I really should think of another show. Or maybe I should stick to being happy being on the ones I do now! If I do them well, I'll get lots of people to listen or watch. It's still just as difficult to win in this situation as it is buying that lottery ticket, but I do get personal satisfaction and have fun with it. And I don't get bit by any bugs.

That is the perfect way to remind you that the Dungeon of Manlove show is still running, of course, and has now been heard in a total of 32 countries. We picked up our first actual sponsor this week, New England Flingz, a swingers club. I love that! Information about them is at http://www.newenglandflingz.net/. I did a hypnosis show for one of their conventions a while ago and am going again next April. So, for all you swingers out there, and you know you are or that you want to be, click that link and let them know where you found them!

Done.

The Peanut Gallery Speaks

This past Friday my show was heckled for only the second time since I have been doing these shows. When I mean heckled, I mean that there was a concerted effort to simply trash the show.
I was at an after prom in Connecticut at a school where there were probably 800 kids running around the place. There was a police presence and more chaperones than I had ever seen. Someone told me that there was a rumor that the party was going to be crashed.
It did seem that my hypnosis show was where the crashing took place.
Still, I pulled off my show technically fine, but it simply wasn’t the best show that I have ever done, as a result.
The difference in a show like mine and one of a stand-up comedian’s, for example, is that the comedian is used to dealing with hecklers and it’s almost a standard part of their shows. It seems as if there is always some idiot trying to out-funny the comedian who usually is prepared with a bunch of one-line insults to deal with such idiocy.
However, when I start the induction process and am hypnotizing people the things that people will shout out from an audience will wake up the volunteers. It’s why any of us who do this say exactly that to our crowds, “you don’t have to be pin-drop quiet, just know that loud noises might wake people up early on in the show.”

So there were about five idiots near the front who decided that they wanted to be the main attraction. They ended up succeeding in waking up about half of the people on stage during the course of the show. All of the adults were up in the back of the auditorium. It would have probably been more disruptive had I stopped everything and tried to get people to come down to put a halt to it. But I actually still had a great bunch of volunteers left on stage, so ultimately, I won because the show kept going despite these little turds best efforts.

Had I decided to address the hecklers a little more directly than with evil stares, I would have said, “Oh, I see that you have already been hypnotized…to be ASSHOLES!”

But, I’ll save that for another time and place where I would rather not go again. Who knows, if it happens there again next year, it might happen then.

The MLB season is now over a 1/3^rd of the way complete. The Phillies, with a 3-game lead over the Marlins in the NL East, have the greatest lead of any of the 6 division leaders. So, and even still in that division, many teams are still capable of taking a division title.
With Albert Pujols breaking out of a “slump” recently, the Cardinals could look to increase their slim lead in the NL Central. Pujols had two consecutive extra-inning, game-winning homeruns this weekend. That was a feat not done since Albert Belle did so in the 90’s.
But for Pujols, this year has been very disappointing thus far. He is hitting just .278 (which would still mean a multi-million dollar deal for most players) and has hit into a major-league leading 16 double plays. What is more telling about his year is that he is not on the NL league leader list in intentional walks. His teammate Lance Berkman, who is having a regular Pujols-type year, leads the league in that category with 7.

Everyone knows that my favorite team is the Mets and they also know that the Mets are having serious financial troubles because of the owner’s dealings with Bernie Madoff, who ripped them off for millions of dollars.
As a result there is trade talk regarding the Met’s shortstop, Jose Reyes who is in his contract year and is currently the MVP of the league. Reyes will be 28 years old this week and his healthy and back to being the menace that he has been whenever he has been healthy.
But there are fans of this team who believe he should actually be traded. Every now and then he’ll make an error or get tagged out trying to reach an extra base and some of my fellow fans will go ballistic.
This makes no sense to me whatsoever. You don’t trade a player like this in his prime. The Mets have done this twice in their existence with horrible results. They traded Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi in the early 70’s (ok, Ryan wasn’t yet in his prime, but Jim Fregosi?) and of course, Tom Seaver. To deal Reyes would be similar to this.
The argument is that Reyes will command probably 17 million dollars a year and want a 7-year deal and the money could be better spent. This argument actually took place after Reyes did make an error on a routine ground ball that allowed a tying run to score against them in a Braves win this past weekend. But as the “sports expert” on WFAN was chastising him for that, he forgot to mention that Reyes SAVED a run in the first inning with a diving stop on a groundball, and also forgot to mention that the Mets “closer” gave up three runs in the 9^th inning of that game.
A caller to this “experts” show was talking about the Mets Carlos Beltran and how Beltran struck out in game 7 of the 2007 NLCS looking at a called third strike. The expert told this guy to remember all the good things and clutch performances from Beltran and to “get over” that play.
Seems as if he should have taken his own advice and remembered the great play Reyes made earlier in that game he was talking about right at that moment.
Reyes is the life-blood of the Mets team, make no mistake about it. There are other players they can get rid of to save the team money even if they can’t get rid of Bobby Bonilla’s contract for the next 25 years, a guy who hasn’t played with the team for 10 years.
Ironically, as tough as the Mets have it right now, if post-season awards were to go out they would have contenders for three of them with Reyes getting MVP votes, Beltran getting Comeback Player of the Year award and 3B Justin Turner getting Rookie of the Year award votes.

Done

Raising Hope

If you like some twisted humor let me suggest that you watch Raising Hope on the Fox network. Its in reruns now but I think its easy enough to catch up on episodes rather quickly through an On-Demand system with your cable TV provider.
Here is the treatment of the show according to its FB page…
RAISING HOPE is a new single-camera family comedy from Emmy Award winner Greg Garcia that follows the Chance family as they find themselves adding an unexpected new member into their household.

At 23 years old, JIMMY CHANCE (Lucas Neff) is going nowhere in life. He skims pools for a living, parties every night and still lives at home with his family, including his MAW MAW (Cloris Leachman); his mother, VIRGINIA (Martha Plimpton) and his father, BURT (Garret Dillahunt).

Jimmy’s life takes a drastic turn when a chance romantic encounter with LUCY (guest star Bijou Phillips) goes awry once he discovers she is a wanted felon. Months later, when Jimmy pays a visit to the local prison, he learns Lucy is pregnant with their baby, and after she gives birth, he is charged with raising their daughter.

Back at home, Jimmy’s family is less than enthusiastic about a new addition to the household. His parents, who had him when they were 15, never knew anything about raising a child and have no interest in trying again. Jimmy may be able to get some help from SABRINA (Shannon Woodward), a sardonic checkout clerk he met at the supermarket if only he can work up the nerve to ask her out. Despite it all, Jimmy is determined to take care of his baby – whom Virginia thinks they should name HOPE.

With very few useful skills but their hearts in the right place, will the Chance family be successful when they step into the unpredictable and immensely challenging world of parenting?

Cloris Leachman steals this show as the rarely-lucid grandmother. For me, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Cast of Raising Hope

Back to TV. America’s Got Talent started again this week. It is a show that I did watch for the first time last year when Howie Mandel joined the judging staff. I like Howie and while I believe that just about anyone could be a judge on any of these shows, he is definitely a plus.
This is the show that last year introduced millions of people to Jackie Evancho, the 10 or 11 year old singer that blew away the world with her voice, only to come in second to some other dude whose name no one can recall (Michael Grimm.)
I thought at the time that the other dude got the win because everyone knew that Jackie was going to succeed regardless of whether she won that show or not. That was sort of fair to me in one sense even though we could probably count on one hand the number of people in this country more naturally talented than Evancho.

Jackie Evancho

New “Dungeon of Manlove” shows are now posted at http://www.marshcast.com/. They are still not for the sensitive. I really have tried to calm it down a little bit so that there is more of a general appeal so we could bring in many more listeners. But it’s not happening. That’s fine; we have other types of shows in the planning stages now that will do that trick down the road. For now, the Dungeon will just remain what it was intended to be…dirty.

Living my own dream…lol

Done.