I have been trying to work through this writing block and everything is a distraction. Next door there is an Asian documentary filmmaker editing some footage so I hear hear the same music looped over and over again. It’s like a water torture but instead of drip drip drip it’s oonst oonst oonst, boonst boonst boonst. Dance music like the kind that comes from one of the floats at the gay parade or when you make the mistake of walking into Urban Outfitters to find some jeans that “are not made in that size” according to the kid with bad skin who works there and probably just doesn’t want to go down to the store-room because he’s gonna quit soon anyway. Oonst oonst oonst. Sounds like the name of a coffee shop in Holland where a kid with bad skin sells space cakes. Holland is where the Muslim stabbed Van Gogh’s great-grandson recently for making a documentary that showed an Islamic woman being mistreated. Oonst Oonst Oonst. I wonder what my nieghbor’s documentary is going to be about; maybe filmmakers who drive their nieghbors crazy with dance music samples looped over and over. Time for a Fatwa.

I think about taking a walk with the dog to clear my head but it is so cold out that tears come out of my eyes. That never used to happen, the tear rolling down the cheek thing. Is that a product of getting older or the world getting colder? Anyway, tear or not, the walk is just a way to escape staring into the computer. I look at the map on the wall; where have I been lately? I just got back from Atlantic City. It is a totally surreal experience to perform before huge crowds of old degenerate gamblers. Like some kind of rock concert in hell. There is a Shakespearean quality to the place. At the end of Macbeth, the forest closes in on the castle with soldiers dressed as trees. I felt like that on stage, like a forest of old smokers in sweatsuits were closing in on me, ready to shake me down, rifle trough my pockets for gambling money. Wrinkly arms greedily grabbing as the slot machines ching chinged an echo of empty bank accounts. I just wanted to spray some Glade to cover up the smell of desperation and warming arthritis cream.

I don’t know which is a harder audience, college kids or old people. I think I prefer old people because they know who they are. I start to think about old people in the neighborhood and if they have gambling problems. Or even if they just have problems. And then not just old people but anyone in the neighborhood with problems. One middle-aged cat really sticks out (you’ll have to pardon the pun when it becomes evident) and I don’t know his real name but my wife and I call him “Erection Man.” He is a big guy that wears tight-ass sweatpants tucked into his boots, and loves to give lost people directions. The problem is that he always has a hard-on, which he goes to great lengths to casually display during the conversations. He hangs out near the Brooklyn bridge and looks for people with confused expressions holding maps, then makes his move: “You guys need some help?” There is also the “Snot Guy.” A delivery guy who is always blowing snot out of his nose. Always. I hear him before I see him. Cccnnnnaaa cccchhhnnnaa. On a bike, bag of food gripped in three fingers, the fourth depressing a nostril. It’s too disgusting to write any more about. Time for a new topic.

The phone rings. It’s my friend C. from L.A. who was a comic and is now a yoga teacher that cracks jokes during class and still sneaks out to commercial auditions between shakras. He is recovering from a bout of chicken pox and describes his skins healing as being in the “Ray Liotta” phase. Then he goes on a rant about a girl who he is seeing that also sees another person. Apparently, the extra ‘’see-ing” has gotten to him, and I hear him light up a smoke. “After having boils on your chest, you wanna have a drink and a cig... celebrate a little,” he says.

I take an e-mail break; another distraction under the guise of being something work-like. An ex-manager I had put me on some kind of junk mail list that I have not been able to block. I have a lot of mails for non-existant people where the fake names are the giveaway. Remus Eugenides. Flavio Hamill. It’s Brian! And of course the insidious subject matter “Our little secret...” The only mail that I recognize is an announcement reminding me who is playing at Luna Lounge. Delete.

I notice my wife moved my pile of headshots, bios, writing samples, away from the shelf they were sitting on in the messy way that I sit them there. I move them back. It’s an ongoing war that is unwinnable, but as Sun Tzu might say is also unlose-able. She moves my stuff when I am not looking, I move it back while she isn’t looking, sometimes moving some of her stuff as a diversion. Two Scorpios at play.

I look at my Five Deadly Venoms poster, reminded of it by the fact that a scorpion is one of the Five Deadly Venoms. I remember seeing this classic kung fu flick at a theater in Washington D.C. where I was the only white person. Everyone else was Chinese. The place was called The American Theater and only showed Chinese movies. The Five Deadly Venoms was one of a triple feature that included Fearless Hyena with Jackie Chan and The Chinatown Kid with Fu Sheng, who was just as big as Chan back then. It is strange how some performers just disappear. I know a lot of comics who have come and gone and could have been big, and no one knows what happened to them. I know one that became a yoga teacher but the rest just fell off. Ooonst oonst oonst. Maybe my neighbor knows what happened to Fu Sheng. I think I’ll go ask.

Catch DC Benny on the first Friday of every month at the Zinc Bar at 9 o'clock. Also check out www.DCBenny.com.