Basta Walker!

Where my vanity and politics collide.

BIFF ROMNEY

Hail to the Chief, Butt Head!

BIFF ROMNEY

MITT.  That’s a one-syllable bully’s name, right?   Sort of like that hyper masculine 1950’s Hill Valley bully who tormented generations of McFly’s.   

Who would strap a dog on top of a moving car?  Who would lead a blind teacher into a door?  Who would tackle a gay teenager and forcibly cut his hair?  Who would try to rape Lorraine in the parking lot during the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance?  BIFF ROMNEY might.  

DEMOCRATS would like you to believe that. 

But, I don’t.  At least, not now.  A bully needs power.

WITHOUT PRESIDENCY

WITH PRESIDENCY

Think of The Presidency as Gray’s Sports’ Almanac.  That’s a powerful thing.  It has the ability to change our entire time continuum.  And, if MITT gets his mitts on it, our future could look drastically different.

What kind of bully society would MITT create?  Equipped with the power of the Presidency, MITT would gloat in his White House hot tub, while our streets fester with crime and despair.  And, your Mom would be forced to get fake boobs.  

Women’s Rights:

YOUR MOM WITH FAKE BOOBS

Your Mom would be sexually humiliated in the United States of MITT.

Women’s bodies are not their own in the MITT’s continuum.  Roe vs Wade, birth control availability, a right to an abortion are all under attack.  Your mom could be forced to get an invasive vaginal ultrasound.... and then fake boobs.  Bad fake boobs.

Immigration:

TIME IMMIGRANT IN LIFE PRESERVER

In this alternative future, immigrants rights would be trampled upon.   That’s what Mitt’s “Self Deportation” immigration strategy is about.  It embracing bullying on the national level.  If we bully immigrants enough, they’ll take their own life elsewhere.  And then wonderful new gadgets like the skateboard could never be invented.

Gay Marriage:

ROMNEY'S 2012 GAY MARRIAGE STANCE

OBAMA'S 2012 GAY MARRIAGE STANCE

By denying gay Americans the right to marry, MITT would be going back in time.  Who wants 2008 OBAMA?  OBAMA doesn't.  He may have looked like a more attractive man in 2008, but he wasn't as gay friendly.

So, what is a vote for Obama in the Back to the Future world?  Obama was once a nerdy square when he took office, but like George McFly, he has the potential to be so much more than that.

FIRST TERM OBAMA

SECOND TERM OBAMA

Do we give Romney the Sports Almanac in November?  Do we allow him to turn us into a bully society?  Future MITT could be waxing our jeeps in the driveway.  Or, he could be waxing our Moms’ new oversized breasts from his hot tub high in a casino.

MITT wants to go back in time.  MITT wants to go to 1955 when state enforced bullying was the norm.  And, he wants to give past MITT a sports almanac so that future MITT can... okay, I’m stopping the metaphor here before I ruin it and mention the Old West, Mary Steenburgen, a flying locomotive or GRIFF ROMNEY.

Didn’t want to go there.

My Scars

Here's the transcript of a story I wrote and performed last night.  Thanks to all the other talented performers, and especially to Janet Blake, who produced the event- and everyone else at Spark.  It was an intense night of very moving stories and a sold-out show.

I don’t have a belly button. I have a belly zipper. Below are creases and indentations and lines and holes. I earned these during my first year of life. I have no memory of any of it.


When you have scars from infancy, it’s sort of like being Jason Bourne: I just woke up with scars and a foggy backstory. It’s like waking up from being blackout drunk and discovering a tattoo. You don’t remember what happened, but something did. It’s etched and sewn into my skin.


I was ten weeks premature. My Mom jokes it was the first time I was early for anything. My wife has a different joke. I weighed three pounds. My head was the size of an orange. Premies don’t look like babies. They’re not chubby and jolly. They look like tiny old people. They’re emaciated and shriveled. Their lungs are underdeveloped. I had a blue complexion. Naturally, the nurses called me Johnny Walker Blue.


I was a premie in 1978. At the height of Saturday Night Fever, I can only imagine my parents hearing the song, Staying Alive, and wincing. I was given a 50% survival rate.


My Dad tells me his memories of walking into the NICU, looking into the many impossibly vulnerable people in incubators next to mine, and then seeing those same incubators empty the next day. That still haunts him. Tiny people with 50% odds. He was a student, but told me that he would dress up in a suit every time he visited the hospital.


For the first four months of my life, I lived in an incubator at the University of Virginia NICU at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. I would regularly receive injections in my midsection. My arms and legs were like needles, so they were too thin to accept needles, so they would push them into my abdomen. One injection punctured my bladder. At some point they discovered this. I don’t know how. I don’t remember. I don’t know how you repair a tiny hole in a tiny person’s bladder. But, they did it. And, I have the scars to prove it. A few months later, I had another operation to repair a hernia. More scars for me to wear around my waist.


In the thirty-four years since I moved out of the incubator, my mother has sent the staff at the NICU at Martha Jefferson pictures. Photos of me in a Peter Pan costume at age five. Photos of me from the local newspaper, pitching as captain of my high school baseball team. Photos of me singing as a member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs. Photos from my marriage. Photos of my baby daughter. These photos say, thank you for my son. Thank you for this life. Keep doing what you’re doing. You may be having a horrible day at work. But he is having a great life because of you.


These are my parents’ scars. They are the physical manifestations of my parents’ trauma, now hidden by thirty four years of growth. Like a wounded sapling that continued to grow into a sturdy tree now oblivious to any of the trauma.


 Birth stories are strange that way. The stories of your birth and the first years of your life aren’t yours. They’re your parents’ stories. I couldn’t really appreciate the story of my own scars until two years ago when I became a parent. Until then, I didn’t realize how large my capacity for love was. I didn’t realize how nervous I was when they took newly born daughter away to have her measured and cleaned and tested. I wanted her with us. This new person who is literally a part of us, should be with us. Look at this new face. See these new eyes. Smell her smell. She was impossibly tiny at seven and a half pounds.


 Okay. Now, I’m trying to imagine her being half that size. Then smaller. Thinner. Blue. I imagine her being born months before we planned. Months before I got my shit together and read the baby books or took a tour of the hospital. I imagine her tiny blue face convulsed in pain. Struggling to breathe with undeveloped lungs. Not being able to hold her. Not being able to do anything about it. Hearing that some fucking idiot punctured her bladder with a needle. How can you be so goddamned careless? Now she has to have surgery. How can you perform surgery on a three pound baby? How can I be sure you’re not going to fuck this up too? There’s no room for mistakes. How do you give a three pound person anesthesia? Why can’t I do something about this? I want to blame someone. I need to blame someone. Whose fault is it? Amanda? What did you drink? Why did you eat sushi that night? How could we live without our baby for four months while she clings to life in an intensive care unit? For four months. Four months of waiting and hoping. Amanda’s milk coming in without a baby to nurse. Pumping it into bags and putting them in the freezer just in case she makes it out of the hospital. If she doesn’t make it out of the hospital, do we throw those bags of milk away? Seeing those other babies die next to ours in the ward. Praying and hoping. Praying? Would I go back to believing in God? What would I hope and pray for? Hoping that if our child survives that our life won’t be spent caring for an unhealthy child. What if there’s brain damage? What if...


I’m glad I didn’t go through that. At least, not as a parent. If there’s any solace I’ve taken from it, it’s that an infant’s pain and trauma is fleeting. It’s only for the moment. Those memories don’t scar. Watching an infant’s pain and trauma does scar.


My parents divorced when I was twenty-five. I’ve often wondered how my birth, how my existence, how the trauma of my birth, that stitched them together, how that scared solidarity affected their marriage. It makes my head spin.


Yesterday, I watched an ultrasound of my daughter, Anna. Amanda’s pregnant again. She’s really pregnant right now. Eight months. I feel Anna kicking and moving under her mother’s impossibly swollen belly. I like singing the Cole Porter Song, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” to her. Her heart is beating strong. She has long legs. The doctor showed us that her head is down and in position. No chance of a breach. The fluid level is good. I’m so thankful she takes after her mother.


I’d like you to feel your bellybutton. Go ahead. You know where it is. It's smelly. It's a lint depository. Like your body’s dryer tray. It’s also a scar. It’s your oldest scar. It’s a scar that shows up on you, but is really your mother’s. That’s what this is. And the ones below it are my parents’ scars. The scars that remind me of them. Of what they’ve gone through. They will always tie me to them.


These scars also mark the battle that I fought in the haze of infancy. It’s the fight for life, the desperate clawing and pleading for life that we start this world with. Except I had to struggle and plead harder than most. And because I was born in the town of Charlottesville, in the state of Virginia in The United States in the modern age, my pleading was answered with a hand from science... and the love of my parents.

The "Taking A Dump" Playlist

If you find yourself settling down to take a dump, consider listening to these tracks before making your own tracks.

"Taking a Shit Playlist"

Buffalo Springfield “For What It’s Worth” [focus on the “Stop, hey, what’s that sound. Everybody look what’s going down]
Radiohead “Sit Down, Stand Up”
Led Zeppelin “When the Levee Breaks”
Bob Dylan “Spirit on the Water” or “When the Deal Goes Down” or “Idiot Wind”
Brittany Spears “Toxic” or “Oops, I Did It Again”
Bob Marley “Waiting in Vain” [if constipated] or “Exodus” [if diarreah]
Dave Matthews Band “Don’t Drink the Water”
Alice in Chains “Angry Chair”
The Beatles “Twist and Shout”
Boyz II Men “Water Runs Dry”
Tears for Fears “Shout, Shout, Let It All Out”
Vampire Weekend “Horchata”


(A standup bit I have not used and seems better suited as a blog post)

Why my daughter will not be an ewok for Halloween

My daughter's first name begins with "E". Her last name, "Walker" (yes, I'm glad that she took my last name). Then, wouldn't it be great if she were an ewok for Halloween? Of course. It's my idea. And, I don't know how much longer my ideas get to influence her Haloween costume decision-making. So, I found a toddler ewok costume online available through Toys R Us, and this is what it looks like:

For shame! No one wants to give candy to a homeless bear. This is pathetic.

So, I decided that this year she shall be a strawberry princess fairy and strut around Hollywood with all the other strawberry princess fairies instead of having an incredible pun costume because she would be sent to the toddler bear soup kitchen- which actually sounds like an incredibly adorable place. So, on behalf of pun-obsessed star wars enthusiast fathers with nothing better to do than troll the internet for toddler Halloween costumes and critique them, Toys R Us, please give us a better ewok costume. I see why you don't sell them directly in your store. They are embarrassingly shoddy. Give us something better- at least with a cutesy nose and/or weapon.

And, once I have a boy whose name will be Luke Sky Walker, well, let's just say there better be a damn good costume for him- or I may be forced to change his name when he's three years old.

My Show at The Comedy Central Theater October 25th in LA

I must say, I'm pretty proud of myself for this one. I've loved playing as the musical guest at the Comedy Central Stage during Sit N Spin shows. Now, they've graciously offered to host my own night. Here's the poster for the show. I'll be doing my standup act (much of the material from "A Really Intimate Experience") along with a few new bits, a new song, and a new take on some of my old favorites. Please make reservations soon. This theater tends to sell out. And, since Comedy Central is producing the show, there is no two-drink minimum or any cover charge. Absolutely free. But, if you don't already own one of my albums, you'll have the opportunity to drop some cash on that. The poster was designed by the extremely talented Cameron Walker, who also happens to be my cousin.

A REALLY INTIMATE EXPERIENCE now available on iTunes

Check out this link below to iTunes where you can preview or buy my first live standup album, "A Really Intimate Experience".