Funny – Live & Learn

T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week

July 21, 2017 by David Kanigan 32 Comments

Parked outside my therapist’s office, I watched another therapist attempt to parallel park. When you grow up on a rural reservation, you only have to park parallel to the earth, so I was impressed as she parked skillfully in a very narrow space. But I guess it wasn’t quite parallel enough, so she pulled out of the space and tried again. And again. I thought she parked well, but she thought otherwise. She parked, pulled out, parked, pulled out, parked, and pulled out for at least ten minutes. Finally, she parked in a way that pleased her. Or maybe she just abandoned the effort. But as she stepped out of her car and walked toward her office, I thought, “Damn, I want that one to be my therapist.”

~ Sherman Alexie, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir”

Portrait: Sherman Alexie

Filed Under: Inspire, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: Funny, Mind, Parking, Psychology, Quotes, sherman alexie, therapy, thoughts

Riding Metro North. And Brooding.

July 14, 2017 by David Kanigan 48 Comments

6:16 am train to Grand Central. No seats, need to stand. I wait until the first stop at Stamford and then shoe horn myself across from a lady in a bright, pumpkin colored dress. In order to fit, I need to sit on a diagonal with my knees in the aisle. Pumpkin shifts her knees to the right to avoid contact. The top of her left knee has a deep burn mark, her right knee is clean. Listen, in these close quarters, it’s impossible not to notice. I shift uncomfortably. Personal space inadequate, we’re bordering on claustrophobia here. It’s the trade you made friend, stand for an hour or this…so this is it.

The Suit to my left is asleep. Meaning, like dead to the world. Rip’s hands hug a hard cover book against his chest; a monogrammed cover, title unknown.

I turn to my morning reading. A blog post by Beth @ Alive on All Channels: “These People Are Not Drowning Today.” Pacino in Taxi Driver pops to mind: You talkin’ to me?. She’s certainly is not talkin’ to me. My eyes flick down the page and catch a passage from Zen teacher Barry Magid: “Leave Yourself Alone“:

“The paradox…is that the most effective way of transformation is to leave ourselves alone. The more we let everything be just what it is, the more we relax into an open, attentive awareness of one moment after another. Just sitting leaves everything just as it is.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: barry magid, Change, Funny, Gratitude, Inspirational, Life, Martha Beck, meditation, Mind, Peace, Psychology, Quotes, Story, Zen

Count down…

July 10, 2017 by David Kanigan 34 Comments

Source: Peteski

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: doubt, Funny, insomnia, Mind, Psychology, Sleep, thoughts

It’s just doubt, that’s the biggest thing.

July 5, 2017 by David Kanigan 13 Comments

You’ve been doing stand-up since the late ‘80s. Do you remember your worst night?

Oh, there are so many of them. In the beginning, there are endless amounts of worst nights. But there was one, after “Everybody Loves Raymond” had been on for a year, out at the University of Florida’s Gator Growl. It’s in the stadium, like, 30,000 people, Dave Chappelle, Larry the Cable Guy and me. Five minutes in, I heard a woman yell out, “You better start getting funny.”

Anything you miss about those early days?

There was something gratifying about going up onstage in front of a room full of total strangers. They’ve never seen you in their life, and they’re kind of like, who is this guy? And then you win that crowd over. That will never happen again, only because somebody in the audience has seen me. Seinfeld said, they give you the first 10 minutes if you’re well known. But you still gotta be funny.

When you first started taking on dramatic roles, what was your biggest worry?

You wonder, are you any good? It’s just doubt, that’s the biggest thing. The desire is there. But then I also want to be a pro golfer, and that’s never gonna happen.

You still have worries like that?

Oh yeah. No matter how successful you are. I hear that from other comedians all the time. You’re just waiting for the funny police to come and arrest you as an impostor.

~ Robert Ito, excerpts from his interview with Ray Romano in “Ray Romano Still Fears the ‘Funny Police’” (NY Times, June 30, 2017)

Photo of Ray Romano: Aces Comedy

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Comedy, comic, confidence, doubt, Entertainment, Funny, mastery, Photography, Psychology, Quotes, Ray Romano

July 1

July 1, 2017 by David Kanigan 18 Comments

Source: itspeteski

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: calvin and hobbes, Cartoon, Funny, july 1, June, summer, vacation

Bones to me

June 13, 2017 by David Kanigan 30 Comments

Source: Aparna Nancherla (via Paper Ghosts)

Filed Under: Inspire, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: Body, bones, Exercise, Funny, hurt, Inspirational, Middle Age, older, sore, Truth

It’s been a long day

June 7, 2017 by David Kanigan 18 Comments

It’s worth mentioning that this is my edit. Of the roughly eight million words handwritten or typed into my diary since September 5, 1977, I’m including only a small fraction. An entirely different book from the same source material could make me appear nothing but evil, selfish, generous, or even, dare I say, sensitive. On any given day I am all these things and more: stupid, cheerful, misanthropic, cruel, narrow-minded, open, petty—the list goes on and on…It wasn’t easy revisiting what are now 156 volumes of my diary.

I broke the job up—a month or two per day—but after reading about me, I’d have to spend the rest of the day being me. I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything quite so exhausting.

~ David Sedaris, in his Introduction to his new book “Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)” (Little, Brown and Company, May 30, 2017)

Notes:

Photo of David Sedaris from The Odyssey
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Filed Under: Inspire, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: david sedaris, Diary, endurance, endure, Funny, Inspirational, long day, Photography, Psychology, Quote, struggle, Writer, Writing

Riding Metro North. Don’t Sit Here.

May 23, 2017 by David Kanigan 46 Comments

You, yes You, are standing on the platform waiting for the next train. The train approaches. You flip open an app that displays which seats are open and…the app flashes a profile of your seat mate. Profiles are pulled together using a composite of the individuals’ blog posts, google searches and social media activity. So, what you have here is a form of seat match-making, with no names or addresses disclosed.

You, yes You, see that there are only two seats open. You scan the first profile, and you move to the second, mine, needing to quickly decide where to sit as the train pulls into the station. [Read more…]