Spread some brotherly love on that cheesesteak, friendo!

So I'm presently in my fourth day of my epic East Coast tour and everything is going really swell. I'm presently, presently at my good friends Micah and Emily's kitchen. We're listening to an Of Montreal CD I got for cheap at one of the delightful Philly used music stores. I've done a lot on my trip so far, so now I'm going to try to list everything real quick....

*Thursday night I got into New Jersey late at night.

*Friday morning I headed out to New York, hung out around the city, bought shitloads of comics, had lunch with my pal Zak and then came home to Jersey for a night of drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and playing my XBOX with my friend Chris.

*I also played with Chris's awesome dog Tripp. More on him later, I'm sure.

*Saturday I got up late, dicked around, had a delicious Jersey brunch with Chris, went to bookstores and comic book stores.

*Saturday night I rode the crazyass Chinatown bus. More on that, as well.

*Got into Philly last night and saw Emily's comedy show. Very funny and interesting, and I'll try to touch on that as well.

*Which brings us to today which was spent lollygagging around, eating a late brunch of potatoes, onions and eggs and then heading into Philly for fun.

But let's first talk about the Chinatown bus...
holy fuck is it crazy. Okay, that's not entirely fair. It was more civilized than I thought it would be, but it was a total bitch trying to figure my way from New Jersey to the World Trade Center to Chinatown. I should have taken a subway, but I'm also retarded and in love my my iPhone, which means I'm enamored with watching the little blue dot that represents myself skittle along the little Googlemap. It's very Inspector Gadget to me, and I love it.

So I got to Chinatown (I knew I was there from the smell of wet laundry and roasted meat) and I was instantly accosted by several cute tiny women in parkas. "WHERE YOU GO?!! Dee see? Philldelfyaa?" Oh crap, I thought. These women know I'm here for the bus and they're totally running some scam. These must be stolen tickets or something. I muttered something to them about, "sorry I don't have cash" and ran across the street. But when I arrived at the proper address, I realized there wasn't really a proper office to buy tickets from. I called up MIcah and he informed me that they were indeed legit, so I payed them and eventually hopped on a bus.

There was this amazing quartet of women friends on the bus. Two white Jersey trash types, and two big-fingernailed black ladies. They were all drinking from little single serving bottles of congac or brandy. They also TALKED THE ENTIRE TIME!!!! About everything. Every single sign they saw they had to read it off "Oh Chili's! They have great margaritas!" "Bath and Beyond, honey we need to go to Bath and Beyond next time."

Anyway, it was generally a pain in the ass riding that thing. Mainly because I felt like such a dick for taking so long to get to Philly. I was afraid I'd miss Emily's show, but the bus arrived, they were there to greet me and we made the show with hours to spare.

She and her group The Sixth Borough had a show at a place called the M Room.



Their group was really funny and Emily was especially awesome as a starlet named Diarrhea. What was decidedly not awesome was this terrible stand up guy I saw called Ch*p Ch*ntry.




I have inserted asterisks for certain vowels in the hope that he won't find this review of his show. It's more for Emily's sake because I don't want him to think she's talking shit about him. Truth is, he needs someone to speak the truth to him. And the truth is, he's terrible. It's like watching a feral child born in a sports jacket and weaned on the worst moments of Evening at the Improv. He's this 25 year old looking dude acting like a grown up and his act consists of things like "Guys love to fart, am I right guys? It's like they're always 'Uh oh, I just farted!' You know what I'm saying, ladies? The ladies know what I'm talking about." At best, this guy will grow up to be a cheery weatherman, but most likely he'll return to his former life as "That Annoying Waiter at Chili's".








The comedy scene, or at least the scene at the M Room, is sort of sad. Well not sad, just underdeveloped and over-important. Which isn't a bad thing, it's great to be supportive of your scene it's just that it feels like so many of these kids are aiming their sites at Hollywood but are afraid to actually move there. Proof of this is their proximity to NY. There's a really vibrant comedy scene in NY but according to Emily a lot of them see going to NY akin to selling out. I don't see it that way. I see it as a way of testing your skills. It feels great to be a big fish in a small pond, and for the most parts, small ponds are generally pretty awesome, some call them communities and this is how we as humans find value in life, but the problem arises when a small pond big fish thinks he's majorly hot shit by being a big fish. Those fish are afraid of the big pond.

Or whatever. Right now Em and Micah are reading gossip rags, we're listing to my new "Yes" CD and this second beer is kicking in. I should stop writing and start living. See you tomorrow, everybody.