Okay, People-
If you are a gambler and need an excuse to go to Vegas, I will be at The Playboy Comedy Club in The Palms this Thursday through Saturday. God, I hope I don’t lose too much money. Maybe I won’t gamble at all. Yeah, I won’t gamble at all. I’ll get some work done. Do some writing. Go to the gym in the hotel. Yeah, this trip to Vegas will be completely proactive and healthy.
I’ll gamble a little.
In the last month I have been in two cars with OnStar, and it gives me the willies and makes me feel like a moron at the same time. I wasn’t even driving. The fact that we are voluntarily being tracked as a convenience is just creepy to me. We are not trapped in lost space travel vessels. We don’t need ground control to guide us in. We are letting our wits, instincts and memory atrophy more than they will naturally by turning the reigns over to apps and satellite monitoring systems in the name of efficiency. Being lost is one of the ways we find ourselves—physically and mentally. It’s something to be cherished and reckoned with, not corrected by machines that can be equally lost. Someday they will convince us that memory is an outdated human mode that is imprecise and dangerous. By "they" I mean the machines that make us do things because we think they are better than us.
I was in a car last night with my buddy Al who was using a car with OnStar, and we needed to find a gas station close by. He asked the OnStar navigation guide puppet master person who gave us a route to a place where there was no gas station. Then Al took out his iPhone to use an app that is only for finding nearby gas stations. It didn’t work. After both failed attempts at technological guidance, he went old school and used his memory. It was exciting having to think and panic.
This week: Monday we have a big live show from The Steve Allen Theater with Rob Huebel, Joe Lo Truglio, Aparna Nancherla, Bob Duca, Eddie Pepitone and Jim Earl. I am slowly getting through all members of The State. On Thursday, I talk to an old running buddy from my doorman days, Jimmy Shubert. This is one of the most personal recollections of what The Comedy Store was that I have encountered. Pretty gritty stuff here.
Trying to not be fat,
Maron
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