I'd make a shitty chicken

A wise chicken doesn't cackle until she lays an egg or something, but that's not my style and plus if I were a chicken I'd much rather be the kind that plays piano. Probably something light, like Debussy. I know what you're thinking: Do I take tips? Yes I do. I refer you to the tip jar on the side of my baby grand. They wanted to get me a concert grand since I'm performing at a pretty big concert hall however I explained that I wasn't the biggest chicken (I actually said I wasn't the biggest "cock on the walk" and we all had a good laugh at that) and therefore a concert grand would be using a hatchet to remove a fly from my friend's beak.

I mean, I want the main thing you notice on that stage to be me and my amazing plumage first, then my romantic (and I mean that in the Platonic sense of the word) and moving playing, and then the light show and then you are free to notice the piano. And the tip jar. Please notice that. But I mean, I don't want to be upstaged by my instrument.

But back to the tip jar. If you aren't able to ascend the steps at Carnegie Hall (yes, that's where I'm performing the works of Debussy) then we're sending a collection plate out into the crowd.

What's that? There aren't any steps? I simply flap my wings and fly over the orchestra pit to get to the stage but I don't really know how it would work for you. And I know what you're thinking again: You're wondering why I'm flying over the orchestra pit instead of entering the stage from backstage where I'll be nibbling on various vittles kept warm on chafing dishes, as per my contract rider? Look, I'm a pretty down the earth chicken and I find that when I take the stage from the audience it really starts things off on the right foot. It's my way of saying that I don't OWN the music. I'm merely a vessel through which it speaks/lives/breathes.

Am I getting too lofty? I do that sometimes. In the coop where I periodically pass the time I'm kind of known as an intellectual. Some think I'm snobby but I'm really not. I just want to know what came before me, and what came after me, and how I fit in.

I read a lot of Nietzsche. I went through an Orwell phase but it hit a little close to home, as you can probably imagine.

1984. It was the year of my birth. Why, what did you think I was referring to?

Anyway, I have to go practice on my Casio keyboard which I keep in my mobile dressing room. A lot of people wonder how I practice and that's how.

Oh and P.S. it looks as if I'll be interviewing a certain Michael Showalter in a video/vlog soon. Happy Valentine's Day!

NOTE: If you want to hear the old radio interviews I did with Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black go to my seldom-updated Myspace page and scroll down on the right side, after the videos, and there is a gray box with the interviews.

Olfactory/auditory assault!

Tonight at the store there was a guy making this super annoying whistling chirpey sound that sounded so much like mating parakeets that I wondered if it wasn't someone's super annoying cell phone ring. It wasn't though, it was a guy making this sound and it was bugging the crap out of me and made my time in the frozen foods section less than relaxing. "Seriously, with the birds, seriously?" is what I kept saying to myself while shooting looks at him and then around the aisle trying to figure out if there was any way I was actually hearing birds. I should have been saying "Seriously, James Audubon, seriously?" in my head, because that would have been more entertaining, but I always think of things to think after the fact!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I came home and the walk from the front door to the elevator smelled like the kind of wood shavings that are inside a hamster cage. And not fresh wood shavings. It smelled like a soiled habit-trail. And the walk from the elevator to my door smelled like wood shavings mixed with meatballs.

Now, a word or two about Red Eye. I may have said some negative things about the Verne Troyer sex tape but here's thing: I watched it for a second and it was truly horrifying. Much moreso than you would imagine. I may have yelled "my eyes! my eyes!"

The only thing more horrifying is the picture of a cat with no face that Michelle Collins was making people look at. I refused. No faceless cats for me I said while walking around the green room holding my hands to the sides of my eyes so I wouldn't see it. Bill and Josh were shrieking so much that I said we should film their reaction to this faceless cat and call the video "Two Girls, One Cat."

about prunes

So, I think I owe you my much ballyhooed prune observation, however I worry at this point that it's been oversold, over ballyhooed, over trumpeted. Can it possibly live up to the expectation? Because this isn't prune brilliance or prune enlightenment or any sort of shriveled bit of prunevana. It isn't even a prune epiphany. If it were served over an omelette it might be prunes over my hammy, though. (incidentally, I used to hate puns. what happened?)

But here goes: the other night I'm looking at a can of prunes and the back says,

"For hors d'oevres, stuff a prune with a cheese wedge, a crunchy walnut or a chocolate kiss."

If you could hear the reaction I had in my head to each suggestion it would sound like "uh huh.... uh-huh, okay... what the fuck?"

When has anyone ever shoved a chocolate kiss in a prune and why would someone ever? To make the prune more exciting? Or the chocolate less?

You know how they say that anything you can think of has been done? So like if you think of some incredibly perverted sex act involving a carrier pigeon, one that probably defies the laws of physics, you just know that someone, somewhere has tried it. The grossest most liquidy and arcane things you can possibly conjur have been tried.

And yet, I just bet no one has ever stuffed a prune with a chocolate kiss. If I'm wrong, I would like to hear about it. All you chocolate prune stuffers, make some noise.