Hot Ice Cubes and Bad Things Happening

Well stick a couple of toothpicks in my eyes and call me writhing in pain and discomfort, how the hell are we doing? Fantastic. We’re doing fantastic. I decided for you. I decided for all of us. I make the decisions in this family.

Isn’t it the worst when there’s a really hot girl next to you but she’s wearing a Dodgers hat so now you have to pretend she doesn’t exist? Sad. Whatever. My complexion looks great, I don’t need her anyway.

It’s crazy when you eat healthy and exercise how noticeable the differences in your body become. The bags on your eyes start to dissipate. The bags on your chest begin to grow tighter, more supple and voluptuous. The grocery bags you bought for 10 cents start to glisten in the moonlight, and you can see hope through the handles.

I ordered a hot tea today because it’s cold out. The problem with hot tea is that it has a shelf life of optimal warmness. There’s really only five minutes where the tea is the proper temperature, and I’m a big “enjoy my beverage for an hour and a half” kind of guy. Iced drinks are better.

Ice also has a shelf life, but even if it melts the drink remains cold. They should invent some kind of reverse ice shenanigans where if you put it in your drink it will remain hot. Imagine if it was like a hookah lounge where someone comes around with burning coals to stick in your beverage so they remain warm. Yeah, it would alter the taste just a little bit, but the temperature… oh the temperature.

Now my tea is gone. I drank it all. What am I supposed to do between thoughts, now? Look at my surroundings? What the hell? This isn’t 1920, I can’t just enjoy the space I’m occupying.

In all seriousness I do wish people could enjoy their surroundings more. Do you ever just stop to look around and appreciate the architecture of life? You know, like really look at the table and appreciate how it was constructed?

It’s quite miraculous, everything we’ve been able to build… I mean what can you make or build? Almost nothing, right? I can’t even build my bed frame. Yet, somehow people are able to construct chairs and tables and bottles and entire cafes. Remarkable I tell you! Seriously, though… I need help with my bed frame. My neighbor gave it to me and he didn’t have the instructions and I’m completely lost here. I wish I was a real man.

There are a lot of young professional women here in Austin. Every girl here either has a spreadsheet open or is conducting an offshore meeting. The word “offshore” makes absolutely no sense in that context but I like the way it sounds so I’m leaving it there.

It’s really interesting to see how gender roles are changing in society. Women are killing it now and men hate themselves. Did you know 70% of all suicides in the United States are white men? That’s a wild statistic. I have a joke about that. It’s a hard one to tell but it’s probably one of my better jokes. You really have to have the audience on your side when talking about things like privilege or race or suicide. Hitting all three in one is often a disaster waiting to happen.

I’ve really been learning about the importance of joke placement when it comes to comedy. I had a phenomenal set last night and I think a lot of it had to do with the ordering of my jokes. I went on stage and the first thing I said was “I have inflammatory bowel disease.”

It’s the most embarrassing thing about me, and I think when you acknowledge something completely embarrassing about yourself it endears you to the audience and they’ll allow you more leeway when it comes to joking about other people or controversial subjects.

People are so tight these days. The audience is like a baby. You have to let them know everything is going to be okay before they’ll let you hold them or else they’ll start crying. Ssshhhhh shhhh it’s okay it’s okay we’re at a comedy club, we can joke about life here. You’re not at the office, you’re not in church, you’re allowed to acknowledge reality here.

It’s kind of frightening to see the reactions from people these days when you do something like simply acknowledge the truth. It’s like people are living in this fantasy land in their minds where nothing bad ever happens and then when you point out that bad things actually do happen it’s like “ahhhhh what are you doing??? I don’t want to hear that!”

Bad things happen all the time. So many bad things have happened. The baddest things… they’ve happened. I think a lot of us choose to forget how bad things can actually get, and I think that’s a mistake. We should be grateful for how good things are compared to how they’ve been. We should always aim to make them better, but from a place of gratitude rather than resentment.

Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel

Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.

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2 thoughts on “Hot Ice Cubes and Bad Things Happening

  1. Best blog in awhile. Enjoyed it, i did not laugh hysterically but I smiled often.
    Keep it going. Good stuff.

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