And other things as well...

Tonight I was barking for a comedy show on the corner of 34th Street and 2nd Avenue. The comedy show for which I was attempting to draw a crowd was at a Caribbean restaurant called the Pine Tree Lodge. I can't believe that I forgot, during my set, to ask how many pine trees there are in the Caribbean. I don't think I was put on a good corner to bark. It was directly in front of a building which must have some sort of high end gym in it, because the majority of people passing me by were absolutely miserable looking yuppies. I know you have to dress the part when you go to the gym--t-shirt, shorts, sneakers, maybe a headband if you're feeling saucy--but there's something about these people that just exuded misery. They weren't going to the gym because they enjoyed working out, or because they wanted to be healthy, or happy, or because they wanted to be in good shape--no, for them, I think, it was a type of penance. A self punishment. Remember in Da Vinci code when the pale supermonk would self-flagellate as part of some absurd purification ritual? I think it's like that for these people. That it's about punishing yourself for not being good enough. Strong enough. Not making enough money, maybe. For needing to go to the gym, for not having a come back when the office clown was picking on you, for not fucking that girl, or sleeping with that guy when you had the chance, or maybe, for doing it. I don't know what they're punishing themselves for, but I do know that afterwards, they are in absolutely no mood to go to a stand-up comedy show. I don't know who IS in the mood for them. I only do bar shows, really. Which means, hardly anyone is actually there to see the shows. I have no idea what kind of audience a real comedy club has.

My friends and I would go to comedy clubs occasionally before we were 21 and could drink. Comedy clubs don't care, they let you in, so you can pay the cover plus the two drink.

My girlfriend said a lot of stand-up comedy is dudes talking about their dicks and other irrelevant things. I must have been feeling particularly meta that day because I immediately wrote a joke about it. But I can't tell you what it is. You have to come to one of my shows for that.

If I ever do another one that is. The last "real" show I did was, I think, in 2007. It was a bringer show, which means I had to convince 5 friends to pay the full cover plus the two drink minimum to see me, some other dumb schmuck and Black Guy from Chappelle's Show Who Isn't Dave Chappelle or Charlie Murphy do stand-up on a Tuesday night. Before the show began, the owner or the club came and dressed me down in front of everyone for having my notes open. Then, this giant condescending prick monger clapped me on the shoulder and said "have a good show." What I actually had was the worst show I've ever done. That whole night, there was a miasma of misunderstandings and bitterness around anything I said or did. The host of the show referenced looking like Screech from Saved by the Bell. I went on stage and referenced that as well. He later, gave me a very serious talk, about how HE could say he looked like Screech, but I shouldn't do it. Right. Because comics NEVER talk shit about each other. Some other night I could have pulled it off, but on this night, everything from my mouth was cursed. He got very angry at me.

I stopped doing stand-up comedy after that, until last year. Now, I'm back, and I'm getting myself mentally psyched to do my next "real" show. Still, it's hard to know how to act. Hanging out with comedians is not like hanging out with regular people. In a regular group of people, some people are funny, some aren't, some are hams, some are reserved, some are laid-back, some are energetic. Maybe it's also like that with comics but I've been assuming they're different so it's a self fulfilling prophecy? I wish I knew. There's some secret to negotiating relationships and interactions when I'm around other comics that I haven't figured out yet. Maybe it's just be natural and be yourself. That's the advice I can imagine people giving me. But how I act around people is based on what I expect from them, I think. Obviously, I expect something from other comedians, and so I trip all over myself. Subconsciously, whatever it is I am expecting must make me very nervous. I think I can defeat it however.

I like being a stand-up comedian though. That is, I like doing it. I like being on a stage and I like when my jokes work and I like when I feel like I'm doing what I always said I was going to do. Who remembers when I said it in high school? I'm sort of, mostly, doing it now. Of course, I have to work a lot harder. The stand ups I know do a show every night, or almost every night. Seeing their facebook profiles makes me queasy: Schmucky Schmuckerson is doing a show this night and this night and this night and this night. Boris Zilberman is fucking reading about it. They all have pictures of themselves with microphones. The microphone is more associated with stand-up comedy than any other genre of performance, I believe, except maybe rap music. The two aren't unrelated. Which is a pretentious way of saying they're related. Rap music, especially rap battles, are won by wit. What can you say that no one would have thought of, but that is glaringly obvious? This is what makes good comedy funny as well. Then there's Akon and Dane Cook.

I'm not sure where I'm ending this. I recently lost my job. I may or may not receive unemployment. If I don't, I honestly don't know what I'll do. Maybe write some jokes about it?

As per usual, so no one thinks I'm too grumpy, here's a Macho Man Randy Savage promo:



Your mustache is crooked.

Here are some cool things.

So this is going out to facebook land, huh? Hello facebook. Hello friends I'm indirectly talking to. Hello high school connections that get annoyed to see my name pop up in their stream because they never really talk to me and they find my picture vaguely annoying. (Everyone has people like this. Just de-friend me, son. I defriended you.)

But why are we talking about losing friends? Why not talk about gaining them? Why not talk about accomplishing things. Why not talk about everything that's changed in a year. Let's talk about married friends, and friends with investment accounts. Let's talk about friends that work hard at being stand-up comedians. Let's talk about friends that build engines for submarines or airplanes or both. Let's talk about people in marketing. Why are there so many of us? What did we think we were going to find. You remember when you were a kid and you were learning all the options for what someone could be when they grew up, and some of them made sense: lawyer, doctor, fireman. Their was a uniform and everything. But then others of them didn't make sense: Businessman. Ok, he wore a suit. But what's a business man except he's busy all the time? I know now: A businessman is in marketing. Marketing is, at it's core, selling ideas. Maybe your own maybe not your own. But that's what you do. Because the whole point is the idea, not the one selling it. So we're marginal by default.

Also, did anyone ever notice that in every romantic comedy the default career is "ad executive." Why the hell is that considered the standard? Because it's shiny and fluffy, and because most moviegoers can imagine that if their lives had taken a different track, they to could be high power ad execs. If you made the protagonist a goddamn Nuclear Physicist, the audience couldn't relate. You're sitting in the audience feeling bad about yourself because no matter how the dice fell there is zero chance your ass would've become a nuclear physicist. But ad exec. Maybe. So you begin to fantasize, which probably producing endorphins or whatever, and so you take the rest of the movie in stride. "Feel good" movie, yes?

But what am I doing. Conan said not to be cynical. I believed him. He seemed like a genuine guy. Cynicism gets you nowhere. Amen. But there was a guy who was valecdictorian of his high school and the head of the Harvard Lampoon. That's not a joe nobody. That's an intelligent, capable guy who went ahead and did it. He wrote the Simpsons monorail episode for pete's sake. Tom Hanks mentioned that he used to work with Robert Smeigel and Bob Odenkirk and I felt all inside because I knew who both of those guys were.

Do you think my last name is suitable for show business? Zilberman? You know what I realized recently...if you say my first name and my last name, you have to noticeably pause between the "s" in Boris and the "z" in Zilberman otherwise you get this slytherin parseltongue thing going on.

You know how a little while ago I wrote about fantasizing about pro wrestling? Well then I went to a WWE Raw show and met a girl whose training to be a pro wrestler. And met a bunch of pro wrestlers. And I didn't sign up for their school did I? Nope. Talk does not equal action.

It's funny: I'm often impressed with my self for knowing about the latest music, but there's a whole slew of shows that have been ridiculously popular for years that I've never watched: 24, Lost, Heroes, Entourage, Dexter, Mad Men. Makes you think how people can fill their time.

I love doing improv and I feel like I'm just on the very brink of being an improv guy. I'm almost right on the edge. That's why I get sort of sad whenever i get the feeling someone I meet in an improv class doesn't like me. It makes me feel just a bit farther from being a part of or finding my thing that's going to be my thing. Although I've met some awesome people doing improv.

Love love love love love love.

This is why I like talking to people

Remember when it was socially acceptable to copy and paste an IM conversation in a way which implied it should be mysterious and illuminating to yourself and others?

ME: you know what it is
it's this
I know what I love doing in this life: writing, acting, and performing comedy
but I've always figured, those things are so amazingly fun
EVERYONE must want to do them
and if everyone wants to do them, then of course I'm not special for wanting to do them too
so instead of pursuing it, I assume everyone must want to do it, so what makes me special for wanting to do it too
so I dont
and I'm doing this corporate thing because a) it pays bills and b) I figure I have to put in the time to do it
I have to know what its like to live in an office
to work in one, freudian slip
but you know what I mean
[Friend]: trust me i know plenty of people who dont want to do those things. I think the word special in general is over used. The stars were not named after us, but that doesnt mean we cant pursue what we want
Sent at 12:36 AM on Tuesday
me: that's poetry

Also, so nobody thinks I'm boring, here's some scenes from Whose Line is it Anyway? a show which in many ways, I find more relevant to doing improv then 30 Rock. Blasphemous I know.

Travel

I want to travel. I mean it. I have to. I mean, I know people that took their pick of hookers in Amsterdam's red-light district every night for a week, a guy that spent the last 6 months traveling across India, China, the Mt. Everest, Australia, and Japan...I was watching WWF SummerSlam 1993 and realized that even these spandex-wearing steroid-guzzling goons have been to AT LEAST every state in the union plus Mexico and Canada.

Meanwhile, I've been sitting in an office chair getting fat. Literally. I'm measurably farther away from my computer screen than I used to be because my gut won't fit under the desk anymore. Sexy right?

Eh look, I sound ok on paper right? I've got a decent job in Marketing, but I never had to sell out in college to get it, i.e. I never took classes I didn't want to take just for the sake of a degree and I got to do what I wanted...philosophy, greek civilization, American Prose before the Civil War.

I met a good friend of mine, Laura, in the latter class, and she's since gone off to China, taught English for a SOLID YEAR, then decided she wanted to do it a bit longer so she re-upped for six more months. Oh, and she got engaged while she was there.

I saw her last week, at a sort of "Nice-to-See-You" party while she was briefly in town. We were at the apartment of a giant Frenchman named Gui, who, after serving pizza spoke to the other people there like it was the most natural and obvious thing in the world for him to guide, direct, and nurture and spirits, questions, and ideas of his friends. It was natural. Though that particular gathering was due to Laura's coming home, those people are there EVERY week, as he leads a Christian Apology group. I like talking to people like that. It reassures me that for every dumbass out there, there is an equal amount of brilliant, intelligent people. And which am I? And how will I know which I am by getting fat in an office chair in the Financial district?

So what should I do? Should I go teach in China? Travel all over the world? Become a professional wrestler?

You know, sometimes becoming a professional wrestler doesn't sound so bad. It sounds dangerous, filthy, and exciting. I mean, I've been a fan of the product, the tv show, since I was a kid, but I'm aware of what kind of people these must be: they will pretend to get hurt in one way live in front of a crowd, while slowing grinding down their bodies with constant travel and a blinding-pace schedule behind the scenes. I've seen independent wrestling shows where surly Best Buy stock boys pull their bike shorts over their guts and throw each other around a sweat-stained canvas in a gymnasium with no air conditioning, while their friends sit in the audience and chat "You fucked up!" And we've all seen backyard wrestling on the news right? Does that look fun? No. It looks absolutely brutal, unrewarding, and painful. But right now, when I think about, it actually appeals to me. Do you guys get what I'm saying?

I'm so starved for adventure I'm thinking professional wrestling sounds like a cool thing to do. Take a good look at this video. It's a fight between two guys named Butcher. THAT is what I'm currently hankering to do. You feel me?




I'm so starved for adventure, I used to sit at work and read FMylife.com, because hey, misery done love some company.

I just read a book called Travels by Michael Crichton. Yes I know I know, he's the Jurassic Park guy. Sure that's fine. His books aren't rocket science, but he writes well enough to sell his goddamn books, and most "real" authors can't boast that. Jonathan Safran Foer might be the best damn new young author this side of Michael Chabon, but ain't no one buying your books, Johnny. And Michael Crichton is practically a household.

Anyway, Travels isn't an action-adventure thriller or whatever, in fact it's not even fiction. It's a sort of travel-log/psychological self-profile from this dude who was a doctor, a movie director, an actor, a world traveler, and goddamn world traveler, oh, and apparently, a psychic.

And me? I'm in internet marketing, thank you.

What's internet marketing? Oh, well, you know that regular type of marketing, the kind on tv, and magazines and billboards and movie trailers? Well, internet marketing is kind of like that, except you can ignore the hell out of it with absolutely no effort. Cha-motherfucking-ching.

Oh, and so you guys don't think I'm a complete cranky-ass, here's an improv scene I did back in March:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CICdOuO6j0

"It's my personality to be jittery. It's part of my charm"

Hey gang,

So I haven't written a blog entry in a while. It's because I've been doing this awesome thing called work. Which, for me, ironically, involves reading lots of blog entries.

On a whole, reading marketing blogs is basically like reading cereal boxes while you're eating cereal. Except you don't get the benefit of cereal, so instead of bullshit promises for something you'll get later for giving them your money today (Mail-order secret decoder rings and Pay-to-Join "Monetize your Bloggging" webinars are different heads of the same hydra)AND a sugar high, you get, sorry for you, just the former.

So I read all the previous blog entries on this site. And I realized that the most important contribution I've made to the well-being of anyone stumbling across this (stumbling across not upon)is that I've exposed them for the first time to the greatness that is Macho Man Randy Savage promos.

Listen to it. He spoke like that all the time. And most important, he had absolutely nothing to say. It's professional wrestling buffoonery at it's best. It could be said to be, you know, a metaphor for our times. Why must a man pretend to be that which he is not to elicit a reaction from his peers? Would he not rather that they react to his soul than his sequins.

Hell naw.

Besides, Lex Luger pissed him off, and boy is he going to get it. I mean, he's 1,000,000%. That's a pretty high percent.



(For the benefit of facebookers, check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EK-Mr6KbB8

Also, everyone should be aware that I'm breaking a pretty serious marketing taboo because I'm posting links and videos and stuff for free, just because I, you know, feel like it. That's a serious no-no. I could be kicked off Digg for this. Or you know, forced to post ON Digg, which is immeasurably worse. ;-)*

*The smiley makes it ALL ok.

Novel? What's that? Sorry couldn't hear you...

Well, of course, I didn't wind up writing that novel. I wrote all of three pages, but they're a hella good, well a hella decent, well, they're three WHOLE pages.

In fact, I won't be sheepish, and I'll offer you a bit of it. Prepare to be mired in brilliance, smallfolk:

“Ok, so when you left to get pumpkin seeds, Mr. Bogdonovich was in the apartment.”
“Was? What? Was?” Sophie had been consoling her grandmother, unsure why she had gotten a deceptively calm call to come immediately back home.
“Sophie,” her grandmother said softly, her British accent making her words seem ethereal, “oh Sophie, he’s gone, Sophie.”
“Gone?”
The officer with the notepad looked at her from under the brim of his hat. Rhetorical one word questions weren’t going to help anyone solve anything.
“You’re the granddaughter,” he said.
“Yes. What’s happened.”
“I’m Officer Marroni. Your grandmother called us and said your grandfather’s gone missing. She seems to think,” Marroni turned to Riggs, still kneeling around the broken glass, sweeping some into a plastic bag. “that your grandfather threw himself out the window.”
Sophie shrieked. “What!” Yet she seemed to take some cues from Marroni’s body language. Somehow that wasn’t the big reveal. He cleared his throat. “But there isn’t any body on the street.”
No body? “So he’s not dead, then?”
“We’re not sure what’s going on here, Miss.” Riggs said, standing up. “What we do know is that your grandmother called and reported a suicide. But, there’s no body spla—there’s nothing on the street below, Miss.”
Sophie went to the broken window. The entire east wall of the apartment had been a floor to ceiling window, with a door opening onto a small terrace. It was the best feature of the apartment and the building in general, which was in a low-rent area of Brooklyn. Now there was a giant gash in the window, like something had been thrown threw it. Even the metal window supports were bent back, and broken apart in places.
"There's no furniture missing from the apartment." Officer Riggs said, wiping glass particles from his knees.
"So what did this?"
"We're not sure Miss. We're not actually sure of anything. We know a hysterical old woman called us and said her husband of 60 years threw himself out the window while she was out of the house. Then we get here and find this."

BAM!

I only got just a little bit farther than that. At one point, I added a character that hadn't been in the scene, and suddenly he was narrating in first person. The book was going to go (might eventually go?) in a direction uncomfortable similar to John Foer's Everything is Illuminated

I'm writing a novel

Hi everyone,

I've decided to write a novel. Yes, I know, that puts me at the very back of the line of fellow Hunter College graduates who have valiantly decided to grace the world with their novels. Or Psychology dissertations. If you're really honest with yourself, the world needs one about as much as it needs the other. But that doesn't so much matter. Everyone's got to have a passion, right? Otherwise how in the world do you justify say, philosophy, or astronomy, or say, internet marketing? If those three fields collapsed, we'd have a shortage of exactly three things:

1)Pissed-off upper middle class parents who can't make themselves believe that $40,000 dollars per semester is going towards a degree in "advanced critical thinking"

2)Men in mostly superfluous labcoats naming planets things like Quaoar. They would be immediately replaced with a motley variety of star-naming websites.

3)Twitter.

No one would care.

However, just like it's important to have passions, it's extremely important to do what you're really good at. That is, not what you're supposed to be good at, or that thing you can do sort of begrudgingly for a maximum of eight hours at a time, provided you can spend most of those hours fantasizing about the cute girl you saw that morning and no less than an hour for lunch (your job). No, what I'm talking about is that thing you naturally react to without having to think to much about it. It's that thing you can relax into without thinking too much.

When I watch pro wrestling for example, I know when a spot is going longer than it's supposed to, or why a wrestler missed a move he normally would've hit. This is based on prior experience watching pro wrestling, and is, as you may have guessed, wholly and completely useless to my everyday experience. Look, it's not that I wouldn't want to become a pro wrestler. It's just that my throat would hurt after a while:



But writing is also one of my things. I usually get so bleedin nervous when it's time to do it that I write in short, clipped, bursts in messy handwriting, so to make sure I don't actually have to face what I've done. I'm not sure why I'm like that. Why don't you write a dissertation about it?

Then, as I read Neil Gaiman's blog everyday, I was reminded about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea of the contest is such: one starts writing on November 1st, and attempts to write 50,000 words by November 30th. Whoever has done so uploads their books to the website and feels extremely satisfied with themselves. The goal of the whole thing is to just write, because, as the website says, most people, left to their own devices, would never actually write the novel.

The contest also suggests that an author tell all his friends about it, since the embarrassment at having to admit his failure will, when all else fails, keep the embattled author from quitting.

So, this, after all, is the point of this whole thing. I'm telling you all so that some of you will tell me,

So where is that novel I heard so much about? You know, the one I had to read a whole pointless blog post about before you got down to the point? You didn't quit did you?

Well, did I?

If I did, it's all your bloody fault. And probably a little bit her fault:



She takes up a lot of my time.

Boris