I’m REALLY behind getting this post up. So hopefully the feed will update quickly so you guys aren’t stuck with the “holder message” I left here while I wrote. But basically tonight on PBS they ran what I think was a Part 2 of and A&E style biography of President Bush. As some of you know we had a father/son combo way back about 200 years ago with the Adams. And we could possibly have a husband/wife combo in the near future… At any rate I ALSO got stuck watching TV because right after watching that show I wanted to watch another PBS show about male Hula dancers in Hawaii. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, my degree is in Anthropology so in any given year, you’d be surprised how many of these type of shows I manage to squeeze in between Battlestar, Dr. Who and Spiderman cartoons. But I make the time for culture discovery because believe it or not that kind of stuff can help you understand things as abstract as the behavior of internet bloggers!

But Bush 1 might be my 3^rd favorite president who was in office during my lifetime. And it’s actually a good time to reflect on his tenure, because you hear his entire cabinet and staff saying how people were attacked them for not going all the way to Baghdad during the first Iraq war, and that went on for years-but now that noise has quietly gone away. Because their projections were that they wouldn’t be able to manage a standing military force in that location (projections made by people in that administration like one Dick Cheney). But I have a lot of respect for Bush 1, he’s real Navy. I mean I was in, but he was REALLY in. A pilot who got shot down and SURVIVED. He has always had this strange and strong idea about family. How strong? Well, both his sons become governors. And l ask yourself this; many people have said that Bush II went to Iraq to “get things right” on his dad’s behalf, and whether you believe that or not if it IS true, how strongly would a guy have to feel about his father to do that?

Not to use Bush II as a segue to failure, but you know, I’m 40 and this year and I’ve really done a lot of looking back at my failures. And they are so numerous and extensive that it’s hard to imagine it was all one person’s life. But yeah, that was me. However to reference Hawaii again, Robert Kiyosaki the Japanese American from Hawaii says that if you’re not failing you’re not trying. But man this last year-to have my OWN woman, I came back to Chicago for, cheat on me AND THEN leave me is such an insult to your manhood. I mean I was bright enough to catch her the first day, but it really says a lot that a woman WANTED to cheat on me. So that hurt. But my failures go back even further. Did you know that BEFORE I failed as an actor I actually failed at working for the government? Well I did.

Here’s how it goes; I was actually going to have a regular life. I mean after high school I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I was going to go to college. Not a lot of thought went into “where” or what I would “do” at college but I planned to go, and then get a job after school. Just what I thought everybody did. In my FIRST week I took a walk to the career office and I saw a pamphlet for CIA, and that was it. I decided THAT was what I wanted to do. I didn’t even have any James Bond type stuff in my mind (I only kinda like Bond stuff, I much preferred Get Smart and Our Man Flint). Bush 1 was on his way to becoming head of the CIA.

So I started trying to figure out HOW to get in. But in those days it was NOT easy. There was no website, or easy to find applications or one page forms to submit. In THOSE days you had to get a 34 page government fold out form and write REALLY tiny in all the little boxes and spaces. So a couple of years later I got serious and applied to their “student” program. They turned me down, said my grades weren’t good enough. I transferred, applied again. They turned me down; said I was too old for the program. I dropped out of college and moved to NY. I started acting and doing Improv comedy. Of course I was very good, got really popular. Wasn’t happy yet. Got BACK into college. Got turned down by NYU 2 times. Wrote an essay, got accepted by Columbia University, THEN NYU accepted me. Told them to go fuck themselves. Applied to CIA for a THIRD time. By this time I had been to South America to study jungle warfare, and Japan to study Ninjutsu. I was still a funny guy, but I was walking death. So NOW the CIA processed my application. Assigned me a “case worker” and everything. He was based in New Jersey.

Got a call at like 5 AM one morning “Have you ever taken drugs? Have you ever had a homosexual experience?” Guess my answers were good. The original pool of applicants was about 3000 of us, then is was a little under 300 and then there were 27 of us for 2 positions. Know what happened? Well I’m writing a blog for dollars now ain’t I? So yeah, I didn’t make it. And after that my life just stopped going according to a “regular” plan. I realized I wasn’t going to have a regular job, or wife and a family “on time.” I knew it was going to be what it HAS become; just………unorthodox. Anyway I still enjoy comedy and PBS is doing a couple of legends of comedy series this Saturday-and one of the featured dudes is Groucho!

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