Hi.

First off, I will finish the story about doing comedy that I started last May. For someone who seems to have no problem getting on stage and whooping like a fool in a rainstorm (in some alternate reality, that was a famous olde tymey saying), I get self-conscious about indulging my own work in that manner. But I will finish what I started!

So! 2010. It’s not even 60 days old and it’s already a better year than last. To say 2009 was the worst year of my life is a disservice to understatement. The understater making that remark would be fired for not working up to his own potential.

While I am a comedian, writer, etc, I still have to hold down a day job to help keep a roof over 3 heads – mine, my ladyfriend’s, and Henry Madison, the intense humping rabbit. However, I lost my job last year the DAY before I went on my first real vacation since becoming an adult (I took the online course to do that; got my certificate in 2005). I never realized how much stress and depression not bringing in money can put on a person. I spent 9 plus months of 2009 sitting on my couch without a job. It hurt A LOT. People trying to get in to the entertainment industry often times have to take jobs they don’t want to support themselves, and it’s tough to deal with the notion that jobs that you don’t want actually don’t want YOU.

I correlated my depression with the amount of squish that has happened to the middle cushion on our couch – the further I sank into the couch, the more I hated everything. It was awful. It winds up coloring everything else you do. At one point, I went to Six Flags on a weekday with some friends. It was an awesome time, but I spent the whole day thinking about how I was a deadbeat without income, and I’m spending the bit of unemployment money I had saved to be at an amusement park when my talents could have been used elsewhere. In reality, I’m at one of the most fun places on Earth; in my head, I’m already punishing myself for having fun.

Then, I lost my dad.

It was sudden, it was out of the blue, and after a few days of lying in a hospital bed, we had to pull the plug on him. It was (and probably will continue to be) one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make. I didn’t always see eye-to-eye with my dad, but the second he was gone I realized I lost something that I will never have again. Even when we were butting heads, or arguing over dumb shit, I knew he still believed in me. Often times, I think he believed in me more than I believe in myself. That type of energy is strong, even if it’s unspoken. You feel it without knowing you do, until it’s not there; then you recognize its importance by the hole you suddenly feel where it once was. The worst part of it all was that I hadn’t spoken to him in over a month. I was busy. He was busy. I left him a message on Father’s Day and then missed his call when he called me back. He got pissy that I didn’t call enough so waited for me to call; I got pissy that he was playing childish games and didn’t call him. Et cetera. And now he’s gone daddy gone. And now I wish I would have played that song at the funeral.

It helped, I suppose, that he was swollen from operations and medication, and had his head shaved, since it almost didn’t look like him. It looked like Dennis Franz trying to play my dad in the Lifetime Original Drama “The Best I Ever Dad.” I was a mess, but I’m sure I would have been much more of a mess had he looked more “normal.” I use that in quotes because no one looks normal in pancake funeral makeup and a coffin. One thing that made me really sad was that he didn’t have a suit to be buried in. My dad’s wardrobe choices were always suspect (he showed up to a court hearing I had dressed in a wine colored three piece suit; apparently he had to spring some of his hoes from the pokey while we were there), but the fact that we had to bury him in khakis and a light green button up made it hurt a lot more. You should look your best when someone sees you for the last time, no matter if you believe in an afterlife or not, and my dad looked like he was ready to go to brunch. So I guess I’m gonna need to buy a suit. I like to be prepared.

I moved on, and then, while still on my couch, lost my three major writing jobs – I was working as an editor, part time, for a website called Ology.com, and was let go, mostly due to my lackadaisical attitude towards posting after my dad passed. Although they had a very lackadaisical attitude towards how much money to pay people, so I guess it evened out. After that, I was dropped as a freelancer for SNL’s Weekend Update. I never got a joke on the air, which stung. Looking back, I feel like I didn’t put a lot of my ‘A’ game in the jokes I sent, and now kick myself for that. In fact, I think my submission packet was better than most of what I wrote for them. Following that, I was let go from the freelance staff of The Late Show with David Letterman. At least, I’m under the assumption that is what happened; the other folk received phone calls (it was a MASSIVE culling of the freelance pool) and I stopped submitting around the same time. To be fair, they may not have had my most recent phone number. Both losses hurt because a) they were the first two gigs I had where I felt like I was starting to move forward in the entertainment industry, and b) I had nothing else at that time.

Also, to anyone who has emailed me in the past and asked about freelancing duties, allow me to offer my sincerest apologies. I let my mood get in the way of my professionalism, and haven’t responded. I’ll post about what I did to get those jobs soon. The short answer for everyone, however, is “No, unfortunately, I can’t get you a job writing for late night television.” Especially now that I don’t have a job writing for late night television.

People who are stupid and don’t understand how to live a fulfilling life will tell you that your 20s are the best years of your life. What that implies, then, is that you peak about 1/4 of the way into your life, and the rest is a steady decline. That is a stupid, stupid notion. I’d imagine these are people that read the first 50 pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and then stopped and said “I get it! His family is shitty and he lives in a closet. He’ll probably stay in that lighthouse and the storm will stay forever. That’s the best this book will get!”

If I’m to work off that assumption, then let me review my 20s, as I will be 30 this year. In my 20s, I: got evicted (TWICE), arrested for helping a friend, watched my mother almost go crazy from medications given to her by her doctors, watched us go even MORE broke, spent the entire decade broke MYSELF, slept in my friend’s closet for a year, lost my dad, lost all my grandparents, and 1,000 other shitty things that have yet to percolate to my foreconscious. If these are the best years of my life, I’m FUCKED. So no, I don’t believe that “wisdom.” The only way my 30s could be worse is if I live in a fucking trashcan. And not the cool kind, like Oscar the Grouch; the shitty kind that blows away when the wind kicks up, and has a mystery goo in the bottom that never dries up.

I will say this: thank god for my girlfriend. We dated through most of our 20s, and if it weren’t for her, ESPECIALLY last year, I have no idea where I’d be. Probably in that aforementioned trashcan. She picked me up and kept me up through some of the most awful crap I’ve ever gone through. Going through the loss of a parent is tough (SPOILER ALERT!), but going through it with someone that cares as much about you as she does about me makes the blows a little bit softer.

That’s why, last weekend, I proposed to Danielle McNamara, the best woman I’ve ever met. We are now engaged to be married. To each other.

For those of you wondering, here’s how I did it – I waited seven and a half years, so I KNEW she wouldn’t say no, then proposed. I like to hedge my bets.

2010. I like the sound of this year. You’re right, Ice Cube, it’s a good day.

-MAL