I Believe I Can't Fly
Phone call I received at 12:20pm during work today
ME: Hello, this is Chris.
LADY: Hello. I’d like to talk to you about an opportunity. You have the choice of receiving a $50 meal gift certificate from your choice of Red Lobster, …, or able to stay for 4-days/3-nights at a resort when you come down to our office to check out our resident offers. You’re in no obligation to buy anything; you can just come down and look around if you’d like. Now, do you have a significant other?
ME: Um, no.
LADY: Well are you, (hesitates) 25 or older?
ME: Nope.
LADY: Okay, is there anyone else at your residence I can talk to?
ME: Well, this is an office…
LADY: Oh. *click*
I was so thrown off at hearing this sort of sales pitch at work that I don’t even remember where she called from. Too bad, maybe someone around here could have used a good meal.
Last night Jess and I went to the Fox theater to go see the “Vince Vaughn Wild West Comedy Show.” As it were, Vince Vaughn was in Bakersfield emceeing a comedy event featuring four stand-up comics who have been featured on television in different scopes and capacities. The comics, in the order that they performed, were Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst, and Sebastian Maniscalco. The evening as a whole was both rather funny and rather, um, interesting, at least from my perspective.
Let’s start with the comics. All four were very funny, and it was a shame that towards the end of the night, I was feeling tired because it was getting past my bedtime. Ahmed Ahmed talked about his troubles trying to fly places (“You guys have to show up at the airport, what, 2 hours in advance. I have to show up 6 weeks in advance now.”) followed by John whose voice reminded me of Clint Howard’s. Bret somehow ended up talking about the countries of the world being the different types of people in a club (“North Korea’s alone at the end of the bar there looking at us and thinking, ‘I could take him.’ Germany and Japan step in a say, ‘Believe us it’s not worth it. Come on buddy, you need to sober up now.”) and ended doing a funny impression of those roller rink “studs”. Sebastian ended the show by talking about today’s un-macho guys from sandal guy (someone who shouldn’t be wearing sandals but does everywhere he goes) to the guy who complains about not getting his coffee sleeve at Starbucks. Each comic had their own styles of jokes, so by the end of the night I felt we covered most of the gamut of humor. They all were great.
The interesting part of the evening took place mainly between Vince Vaughn and drunk audience members (yes, they were selling alcohol there and everyone kept going back for more) shouting things out. I keep forgetting that I’m in Bakersfield and not on a college campus, where even though we might not consider ourselves polite, it is far more subdued about these sort of encounters. I dunno, maybe it’s because USC is in LA and people are more used to seeing celebrities and don’t feel the need to shout out stupid things (“Brad Pitt sucks!”) during the show (not to say that college kids can’t be wild or unruly). So after the fourth person yelled out “You’re so money, Vince!” he just stopped talking and said, “All right, lets get it all out of the way now. Um, ‘Earmuffs’, ‘You’re so money, baby’, ‘What'd you do? You motorboat 'em? You played the motorboat… *phhhttbbbbbb*’” and just went on to throw out there several of his one-liners. He brought out Peter Billingsley (the boy from “A Christmas Story”) between comics and they re-acted out a scene from an after-school special they were in about steroids use. That was funny, except for the stupid people still shouting stuff out. Then later in the show he brought out Dwight Yoakam. Now I may live in Bakersfield, but country music escapes me. I don’t know anything about it and I don’t listen to it, so I don’t even know who Dwight Yoakam is, but as soon as he came out the entire audience exploded like he was Elvis or something. I just sat and clapped in bewilderment and then looked around at everyone going wild while he was performing. I’m sure if I were more like my fellow Bakersfieldians I’d have been more enthused, but it was fun, nonetheless, and he got Vince to sing along to “The Streets of Bakersfield” (which I found out was a song). The show ended with Vince doing karaoke with the audience to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”.
Like I said, the evening was fun, but it was a startling reminder that I was indeed back in Bakersfield, surrounded by country music lovers and generally the sort of individuals I tend to avoid.
ME: Hello, this is Chris.
LADY: Hello. I’d like to talk to you about an opportunity. You have the choice of receiving a $50 meal gift certificate from your choice of Red Lobster, …, or able to stay for 4-days/3-nights at a resort when you come down to our office to check out our resident offers. You’re in no obligation to buy anything; you can just come down and look around if you’d like. Now, do you have a significant other?
ME: Um, no.
LADY: Well are you, (hesitates) 25 or older?
ME: Nope.
LADY: Okay, is there anyone else at your residence I can talk to?
ME: Well, this is an office…
LADY: Oh. *click*
I was so thrown off at hearing this sort of sales pitch at work that I don’t even remember where she called from. Too bad, maybe someone around here could have used a good meal.
Last night Jess and I went to the Fox theater to go see the “Vince Vaughn Wild West Comedy Show.” As it were, Vince Vaughn was in Bakersfield emceeing a comedy event featuring four stand-up comics who have been featured on television in different scopes and capacities. The comics, in the order that they performed, were Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst, and Sebastian Maniscalco. The evening as a whole was both rather funny and rather, um, interesting, at least from my perspective.
Let’s start with the comics. All four were very funny, and it was a shame that towards the end of the night, I was feeling tired because it was getting past my bedtime. Ahmed Ahmed talked about his troubles trying to fly places (“You guys have to show up at the airport, what, 2 hours in advance. I have to show up 6 weeks in advance now.”) followed by John whose voice reminded me of Clint Howard’s. Bret somehow ended up talking about the countries of the world being the different types of people in a club (“North Korea’s alone at the end of the bar there looking at us and thinking, ‘I could take him.’ Germany and Japan step in a say, ‘Believe us it’s not worth it. Come on buddy, you need to sober up now.”) and ended doing a funny impression of those roller rink “studs”. Sebastian ended the show by talking about today’s un-macho guys from sandal guy (someone who shouldn’t be wearing sandals but does everywhere he goes) to the guy who complains about not getting his coffee sleeve at Starbucks. Each comic had their own styles of jokes, so by the end of the night I felt we covered most of the gamut of humor. They all were great.
The interesting part of the evening took place mainly between Vince Vaughn and drunk audience members (yes, they were selling alcohol there and everyone kept going back for more) shouting things out. I keep forgetting that I’m in Bakersfield and not on a college campus, where even though we might not consider ourselves polite, it is far more subdued about these sort of encounters. I dunno, maybe it’s because USC is in LA and people are more used to seeing celebrities and don’t feel the need to shout out stupid things (“Brad Pitt sucks!”) during the show (not to say that college kids can’t be wild or unruly). So after the fourth person yelled out “You’re so money, Vince!” he just stopped talking and said, “All right, lets get it all out of the way now. Um, ‘Earmuffs’, ‘You’re so money, baby’, ‘What'd you do? You motorboat 'em? You played the motorboat… *phhhttbbbbbb*’” and just went on to throw out there several of his one-liners. He brought out Peter Billingsley (the boy from “A Christmas Story”) between comics and they re-acted out a scene from an after-school special they were in about steroids use. That was funny, except for the stupid people still shouting stuff out. Then later in the show he brought out Dwight Yoakam. Now I may live in Bakersfield, but country music escapes me. I don’t know anything about it and I don’t listen to it, so I don’t even know who Dwight Yoakam is, but as soon as he came out the entire audience exploded like he was Elvis or something. I just sat and clapped in bewilderment and then looked around at everyone going wild while he was performing. I’m sure if I were more like my fellow Bakersfieldians I’d have been more enthused, but it was fun, nonetheless, and he got Vince to sing along to “The Streets of Bakersfield” (which I found out was a song). The show ended with Vince doing karaoke with the audience to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”.
Like I said, the evening was fun, but it was a startling reminder that I was indeed back in Bakersfield, surrounded by country music lovers and generally the sort of individuals I tend to avoid.
posted by Chris Burzlaff @ 9/16/2005
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