I’ve been home now for about a week.  You have no idea how great this feels!  The streets are still familiar, the buildings look different but it all still feels like home.  I’ve been setting up furniture and going through containers almost constantly for the last few days.  Today, I received and assembled my first new bed since I was six years old.  Figures this would finally happen at a time when certainly I’m never going to have sex again.  Story of my life.  At any rate, I think I’ll be spending tomorrow wrapping up the last few big things to arrange in the apartment.  Pretty much the kitchen, and the poker lounge.  After that pretty much all that’s left is the studio equipment.

     It looks like I shouldn’t have any trouble setting up the studio now.  I’ve just about worked out how to arrange and store everything to make setup and tear down fast and efficient.  I’ve even worked out a talk show configuration for the new studio.  Maybe I’ll be able to start up a new show sooner rather than later.  I’m looking forward to start recording podcasts again.  I may start hitting open mics in the next couple days, start making new friends and all.  Who knows?  MAybe as a single, middle-aged man I’ll be able to make new friends and start doing fun things again.  I guess only time will tell…

     You know how much I love the first season of Andor and I finally took the time to catch up on season two and I’m watching the new episodes right now.  I have a lot of thoughts and I’ll be reviewing it properly later this week.  In short, my concerns about how they formatted this season have been pretty accurate.  It is of course well done, my concerns were in regard to pacing and storytelling.  Again, I’ll write more on this later.

     Ok, I’m coming up on a second deadline since I started writing this so, I need to wrap it up.  Also, I have a job interview so, I should probably get in a nap or something soon.  I’ve been watching Futurama again recently.  I haven’t watched the last few seasons of this show as many times as I’ve watched the first five so I often forget just how good those seasons really are.  The attention to detail and continuity is astounding I f you haven’t watched Futurama lately, you should.  you may learn something new, or at least notice something you didn’t before.  Example Given; in the pilot, they show Nibbler’s shadow under Fry’s chair as he’s knocked into the cryogenic tube.  And then in the episode Jurassic Bark, from what I’ve been able to pull up short of rewatching the episode again right now, we again see Fry falling into the cryogenic tube but this time we see another shadow under the chair aside from Nibbler’s.  In an episode after that one, The why of Fry, we learn definitively that not only did Nibbler knock Fry into the tube but also that the second shadow is from Fry being sent back to stop Nibbler.  Like I said, astounding attention to detail.

     Well until next time.

     FINALLY!!!  I just have a few more things to load into the truck and then I’m out of this jackass, know-nothing, bullshit, one-horse-town.  Suck it, utah!  You could’ve had ME as supreme overlord and you blew it!!!  I kept fucking up the packing.  Sure, I’ve been sitting around not getting it done for the last four months but the real problem is that the truck I got may have been too small relative to the volume of shit I’ve collected over the last twenty-something years.  I’ve got a little space left in each the truck and my car and it’s going to be tight looking at what I have left to pack.  And hey, turns out that collecting mugs, a fantastic idea!  Unless you live in a shitty apartment and then have to figure out how to transport them across two states.

     I think I’m going to keep this post short seeing as I’m three hours…two days…four months…twenty-three years behind schedule…yeah, I know!  I’m doing it.  Say, maybe I’ll even go to the beach soon.  I’d hate to think I waxed my back for nothing.  Keep an eye on my Bluesky account, @comedyshedradio.bsky.social around one or two o’clock in the morning tomorrow, April thirtieth, pacific daylight time, and by the way fuck daylight savings and yes I’m bitching about daylight savings all year round now.  Anyway, by that time will at least be back in California and will be playing on a loop Welcome Back.

I don’t have much to report today.  I’m sending ahead, ideally at least half of my shit tomorrow.  I may even have all my shit together that I may be on the road this weekend and be back home…let’s see…this weekend.  I love it when a plan comes together.  Maybe I’ll finish watching Daredevil Born Again this week but Andor season two is starting today.  Two of my most favorite things is Star Wars and espionage and you have no idea how thrilled I am to finally have the two together in a series.  That said I would love a Jedi spy series, vast rich and untapped potential there.  I have some ideas I would like to work out if Lucasfilm and/or Disney are interested.  I don’t need to say this here but it should be said and I tend to say it every chance I get.  Quinlan Vos was poorly portrayed in The Clone Wars.  They made him out to be some sort of bro tough guy.  He is actually a fairly stoic and superbly complex person.  He was a spy during the clone wars at various times a double agent infiltrating both the Jedi Council and the highest ranks of Dooku’s confidants.  And that all was after years of training specifically in covert operations under the tutelage of the most skilled Jedi spy in their history.  That alone is a fantastic story was only told in a series of comics that I’m pretty sure were only read by me.  My point is there is still miles of great storytelling available.

     I can’t wait to be back home, in the old neighborhood, facing the ghosts of my past, my old In-N-Out Burger.  All the open mics everyday where I’ll eat shit in front of everyone.  It’s going to be so much fun!  Being able to walk the streets of my youth with the freedom of knowing that I wouldn’t be going home to an abusive “mother” stealing from me everything worthwhile.  I should’ve done this years ago before losing important people.  Of course, if the methodology of domestic violence weren’t so effective, it’s unlikely so many people would use it.  In any case, I’m finally going home!

     I’ve been thinking about how to rebuild the studio when I get there.  I have some ideas of how to configure the furniture so I can squeeze the desk into the living room.  We’ll have to set up and tear down the equipment whenever recording.  Not the greatest price to pay for all this.  I do need to figure out how I’m going to set up all the resin and other arts and crafts space.  As long as I make it down this weekend I’ll have plenty of time work out those details before the new furniture arrives.  Wow, it’s almost that I’m a real adult suddenly.

I’m finally getting my shit together.  I have more totes to start packing again and I made the arrangements for a U-Box.  This weekend Dave and I are going to clear most of my storage space at least, I’ll have the container full and shipped by Wednesday, and we’ll see if I can things wrapped up here by that weekend.  I have my apartment locked down, I’m sending out my résumé and applying to jobs just about every other day right now.  I even ordered a sofa, my first sofa I’ve bought as opposed to inheriting from other people buying new furniture, and in that order I purchased a mattress and am deciding among a few different interesting bed frames.  The first new bed I’ve ever owned.  Seriously, here I am forty-something and this will be the first new bed I’ve had to look forward to since I was six years old.  And of course, that was a bunk bed!  I’ve never been one about status or wealth but yeah, a middle-aged man should have more in his life by this point.  I don’t have a family, not because I don’t want a family simply because I could never afford to have one.  Because as a teenage child in utah, I had more sense than to “get married” and have five kids before home room.  I put that in quotation marks because those people are only playing house.  This whole god damn state has fifteen children per adult and not one parent among them.  Certainly not in its “government”.  I didn’t mean to go this way right now but I just realized that I hadn’t posted yet today and I’m on my way to the shower.  That is to say that I’m on the toilet and pushing this Middle-aged-man-what’s-dying-alone-diet shit through this middle-aged man anus, my thoughts often and quickly turn to utahns.  My point is, I’m finally doing things as a middle-aged man that most people take for granted in their twenties because mommy and daddy carried them into their thirties.  Moving on.

     The other day I was watching some of The Drew Carey Show and I was reminded that Kelly Perine is a very skilled performer.  He played Chuck the Security Guard on that show and he was always hilarious!  He did some pretty wacky things as that character but he was more often than not the ‘straight man’ in those scenes and did so across from some fairly absurd visual gags and some crazy lines.  I haven’t watched too much of his other stuff other than the commercials he did throughout the nineties and early oughts, but someone who can get the laughs he did performing on The Drew Carey Show, he definitely deserves some acknowledgement for his skill and talent.

     Ok, I need to get going on things today but I hit my goal here and it looks like my keyboard is running down and needs to be charged so, I’m calling it here.

So, my power was shut off the other day.  Everything is fine.  I just forgot to pay the bill…for several months.  I often forget just what it’s like without electricity.  We think that our houses or apartments are dark and/or quiet when we have everything shut off and there isn’t anyone else around but that truly is not the case.  My eyes are considerably more sensitive to light than peoples’ and my hearing has always been borderline super-human, which means that with the little bit of light created by the small LEDs in a few recharging devices throughout my apartment is just enough that I can effectively negotiate the mounds of garbage and bullshit more easily than anyone else.  The faint hum of electricity whirring through our walls is the most faint of white noise that admittedly I don’t notice until it stops.  This gives me some faint idea of how tinnitus feels.  With my power off for a whole day I couldn’t stop myself from noticing the void of sound.  Even playing podcasts on my phone much of that time, I just kept not hearing the electricity that wasn’t around me anymore.  And that night when there was just a faint stream of light coming through my bathroom window, one really understands the effect of light pollution.  Seeing so few stars in the sky most of my life and the few brief moments like this is boggling to the mind just how little it can take to get us back from where we are.  I’ve been in this circumstance many times before but this time, knowing that I actually had money on hand, I was able to appreciate and almost enjoy this experience.  Remembering what it’s like before the profound ubiquity of interconnectivity and electronic devices consuming our attention and time.  Don’t worry, my iPads and phones were charged so, I was able to draw most of the night.  So, I wasn’t having to battle with my own thoughts as much as I would’ve normally.  

     I’ve been thinking about when I was child and would almost daily take five dollars out of her purse when my “mother” was asleep and then walk about three miles to In-N-Out Burger to feed myself since she couldn’t be bothered.  I would be walking three miles of Van Nuys Blvd. in the middle of the night.  I didn’t have a walkman and it was about a decade and a half before the advent of the iPod, let alone the iPhone.  Point is that I would be making that walk without anything to distract me from my own thoughts.  Which means I was spending about two hours actively working to not break down weeping in public.  And then the hour or so walking back where I stopped caring about it and then break down weeping in public.  What I’m saying is there was a time when people not only could but had to think for themselves instead of just regurgitating the mindless prattle they picked up off the internet.  A thing I STILL can’t comprehend when the whole rest of the internet is actual and legitimate information!  Seriously, what the fuck?!  Anyway, and something one can learn on the internet is that ‘anyway’ is an adverb which means it doesn’t pluralize.  Anyways, it turns out is just the bastardization of the word anywise.  Try saying that to sound linguistically competent.  Back to my original point.  I recommend fully shutting down the power to your home sometime.  And I’m sure most of you don’t know, there’s a junction box behind a metal panel in LITERALLY EVERY HOUSE, APARTMENT, AND EVEN SHANTY!!!  It’s just a series of switches connected to the electric circuits of the domicile, which means you can cut off the power to entire rooms, and there is even a master switch that cuts off the power to the entire home.  Take a day and just turn it all off for a little while and explore your own thoughts for a day.  I mean, don’t necessarily try this if you have family members on sort of life support…or maybe you want that.  By now you know my experience with that circumstance.  Again, just give it a shot sometime.  You just might like it.