Alright week, let's see what you've got!

Good Morning Party People,
              It's 6:30 am, the sun is about to come up and I've just hit play on some music for this blog. Radical Face's Ghost is always a good choice for me when I'm writing. Now that I think about it,Blind Melon's Soup is my go to when it comes to painting and when I'm working on music or comedy I don't listen to anything. Music has been such a big part of how I choose to see the world but to be honest, I've had to learn when not to listen to any music when I need to work on stand up. I'll make sure my car is strangely quiet when I'm on the way to a mic, the sixteen year old me throws a fit when I do this.
              So what's new this week? Well money sucks once again, but then again that's nothing new. The way my job's schedule system is set up is that if you don't up sell consistently on every table you don't get shifts, that's what happened to me. One one hand I can work harder and sell more and stop bitching about this system, or I could write to the company and show them why that system sucks on so many levels. I'd write them but if I did it would mean I cared about this job WAY more than I should.
              I've come up with a new warning system where in that every time I start thinking about work and get pissed off at any number of random things I pull out my notebook and start writing jokes. Why? Because hating on work is a major distraction for me. The best way for me to stop being distracted by my day job is to get to a point where I don't need it anymore.
             Last week I hit up three open mics. My goal was five so I missed it by two. Granted there was a shit load of snow in Denver but deep down I'm pissed I didn't brave the weather to hit up the mics.
             This week I start a new and hope to hit up five mics. I've got some new stuff to work out so I'm pretty excited. I've also have some new pods to record and I'm hoping that will go well. If anything I'm moving forward and on a good day I can see the progress I'm making.
             There's a part of me that wants to talk about the whole Sean Penn /green card joke that has a bunch of people pissed off. When upsets me about any of this is that I've always thought of myself as a liberal but when I see "outrage" like I saw on twitter that night it makes me understand why conservatives hate liberals so much. Here's the thing, I understand why people might be upset, on a human level it makes sense to me. However as a comic the reaction of the Internet is upsetting because I know at some point I'm going to have to face this reactionary wall of fear and hate.
              What's funny about this is that I'm planning on a confrontation that would only happen if I were commercially successful  in stand-up , which could happen but is in no way happening now. In other words I'm putting the cart before my high horse .
              Ok so I need to plan how I'm going to use my day today, I need to do a few workouts and work on my sets for the week, and of course schedule some pods. I might not have the cash in my pocket to make me happy but at least I have a shit load of time to make my life happy, now to just use it wisely!
Till next time Party People,
Keep on a Chooglin!

Jon Carelli sits down to shoot the breeze about life,laughing and for some reason racism.

Damn you Henry Rollins! It's time to get my ass back to work!

Morning Party People!
            For the past year or so I've been trying to rewire my brain. That's the best way to describe what it is that I'm doing. From my physical health to my mental health, I've been working on taking baby step by baby step towards the person/artist that I want to be.
            It started when I came to Denver this time last year. It was the new start that I had dreamed of ever since I knew my marriage was over. You see when you go through something as destructive as a divorce it acts the same was as a forest fire. Yes there is a lot of burning of trees, yes there is a lot of smoke that gets in your eyes so you can't see straight, and yes a lot of the creatures who lived in that forest are either dead or homeless and hungry but out of all that destruction new life springs forth.
             The hard part is not wanting to ditch that forest for a similar forest that isn't on fire. The other forest doesn't have your past but it has the same problems as the last one did. Similar creatures  and similar trees that choke out the same sun, Think of it as running from your problems only to find shelter and comfort in a new environment which has the same issues as before.
            It was important to me that I not "Run" from my problems in Phoenix. I had worked hard to overcome those problems so when I moved to Denver I did it with a blank slate that I had earned and created. In this past year I've spent way more time doing comedy and writing than I had in my fifteen  years in Phoenix. I had also started working on my health through DDP Yoga, in doing so I've addressed more of my bad health habits here than I have ever done. All in all I'm doing what I wanted to do and have made a lot of my move here.
            Here's the thing, I know I can do more, I know I could do better.
            A week ago  stumbled apon a episode of Pete Holmes podcast You Made it Weird where his guest was Henry Rollins.

 http://www.nerdist.com/pepisode/you-made-it-weird-243-henry-rollins/

            If you have never listened to a podcast before this is a good one to start out on. It's shows like this and conversations like this that made me want to start my own show. I learned so much from this interview with Henry Rollins. First off I learned I don't want to be Henry Rollins. I do however want to have some of his habits as well as his work ethics. To me it seems like Henry works very hard to get shit done, I think an excuse is like a cancer that eats away at his soul and everyday he takes a scalpel and cuts it out of his own flesh only to great the sunrise and say"Let's do this fucker!"
             He's always working to get better at what he does, he even works to get better on getting better and when he's not doing that he's working on getting better at getting better. Life is a finite thing and he is hyper aware of that fact so he's trying to make every day count So I'm going to follow his lead and do the same thing.
             The power of conversation is an amazing thing, there's something about hearing a story of someone's success and having it empower you do move your own life forward. One of those steps for me is this blog. This little blog that I started a ways back and have sadly neglected
.
             My new goal is to post here once a week, I'm going to force myself to write and in so forcing myself to observe and connect with the world around me. It's the next step in my own evolution, I'd call it a baby step but I think my "baby steps" have grown into something else.

             That's all I have for this week, tune in next week where I'm sure I'll be bitching about my day job! Till next time Party People, Keep on a Chooglin!

This week we talk with writer/director Jayson Spence!

Let's talk about gardening!