2016-The Interview-An Exclusive Look At.........

*

(12/29/2016 at 07:35am PST an interview in a local bar.)

*Not a 'whites only MRA' meeting.

"Pssst....So it's me 2016. I don't know why everyone is freaking out. We're all going to die, but I was summoned to speak on this kid's blog and he has one 'Make a comic wanabe wish' so I will roast soon enough with this kid. He promised me good publicity so..... Look I'm sorry. I, I never wanted things to end up this way but I'm just a year people. Things happen in me. You think I'm bad did you see my cousins 2001 and 2010? Talk about a bad act! I mean Jesus, even when I talk to him year one looks great in comparison! Oh shit, here he comes to ask his 'great' questions...."

Jack: Hello and welcome 2016, thanks for agreeing to this interview.

2016 takes a long drag off a long cigarette.

2016: Free publicity pal.

2016 puts out the cigarette and immediately lights a longer cigarette.

Jack: Right off the bat, I want to ask you. How are you holding up lately?

2016: I mean I'm doing as well as I can for a year that's going to die in three days, you know?

Jack: I don't know, care to expand on that?

2016 puts out cigarette and grabs pipe and loads it with crack. Takes a long hit.

2016: You mind?

Jack: Me casa es su casa.

2016: About that buddy. You don't have any controversy in this house, what gives?

Jack: I'd like to respectfully of course bring the focus back to you if we could. What's controversial about speaking Spanish in cliché form?

2016 pulls out a picture to show me sobriety.

                                         

2016: This upsets you doesn't it?

I stare blankly at 2016.

Jack: Ok 2016 I was polite enough to grant you this interview can you just hold on with the photos?

2016 begins to move his head left and right on a swivel intermittingly taking whippets and injecting heroin into its veins.

2016: When you reached my age kid, you don't care anymore. Look, you see this picture?

2016 pulls from his pocket a picture.

-Jack: You're saying you started the year off as Donnie Osmond?

2016: Who didn't? Look, you Americans think it's all about you. Oh, we didn't get universal health care and we're going to cry and......

Jack: Can I stop you for a second? I wanted you to be allowed to speak without

2016: Time!

Jack: What?

2016: You wanted to stop me for a second. It's been two.

Jack: Ok look, I know you don't have much time and each second is valuable to you.

2016 looks pontific

2016: Do you though? Do you really know? Do you know what it's like to be raised in the 21st century family? Having to hear stories and songs about '1999' and the 'New Millenium'? Yeah...Yeah, I got upset.

2016 begins to cry and puts down the drugs and starts vaping.

Jack: Look, I didn't want to be perceived as attacking you I just had some questions for you.

2016 crying

2016: I tried you know? I tried to hold it together. David Bowie was not even me! Look to my great great great grandparents the 70's for that!

Crying even louder.

Jack: People are just upset you know?

2016: Oh yeah, of course. I mean let's blame it on the even years right? I mean look I know you got shot in 10' and for some odd reason you started stand up this year. Don't you FEEL responsible in any way?! Yeah, I know things.

Jack: Actually, while not a fun experience, getting shot WAS kind of a wake up call so it wasn't entirely all bad.

2016: And the stand up?

Jack: Touche.

2016, gaining confidence, stops crying and begins to do a line of cocaine.

Jack: Where did you even get that?

2016: This is America right? You want a bump.

Jack: I don't. I have coffee I'm good.

2016: Eh whatever floats your tiny boat. Me? I don't care. I see you gave up drinking earlier this year too.

Jack: Not coffee and water though.

2016: Please with the dumb jokes, ok kid?

2016 drops 10 hits of acid.

Jack: Ok, back to this year in review. Care to explain American politics.

2016: No.

Jack: Why?

2016: I'm just being honest.

Jack: And I appreciate that 2016 but I was hoping you'd elabora--

2016: Hey, hey kid!

2016 leans in

2016: Like a Mormon teen practicing sexual abstinence, I don't 'give a fuck' ok?

Jack: Ok well now you're just plagiarizing a rap song I can't think of.

2016: You know what I learned kid?

2016 takes about twenty seconds to pause think, and take 6 consecutive shots of Jack Daniels neat.

2016: Nobody remembers the good, only the bad in a year. The truth is....

2016 excuses himself to vomit on the floor.

2016: Where were we?

Jack: You were reaching an epiphany of some type of dramatic arc in an horrible interview.

2016: Right.

2016 begins to take 10 pills of ecstasy washed down with a gallon of absinthe.

2016: The truth is. The world as is, is chaos.

2016 starts twirling in circles.

Jack: Chaos? How do you explain then the growin----

::CRASH SOUND::

2016 has broken the Ikea furniture
He slowly get up and composes himself and sits down.

2016: Sorry about that. Where was I?

Jack: You were talking about the world is chaos.

2016: Right. I-I.....oh here it is.

2016 takes out a gun and lays it on the table.

Jack: 2016 I'm going to have to end this interview please. I told your publicist, Kellyanne Conway no weapons please.

2016: No, no, no. You're misunderstanding me kid. This isn't for me. I've been listening to Dylan lately and that mother fucker is immortal. Put these to ground please. And for the love of God, please enough with the stand up?

Jack takes hit off of a balloon for helium voice and jumps off stage to startle a sweet old man.

Jack: No.

And with that 2016 goes to Heaven with all dogs and people who we lost in 2016 and 2017 enters the room.

2017: SURPRISE!

2016 reconsiders and shoots 2017 in the head.

2017: Well, this must be the place?

2016- A Peer In Review

Mid-west hello Seattle!

How are you? No, no, no, tell me in detail. Never mind the line.

Get that highly complicated coffee order in hand (I got my Mickey Dee's 'Too hot for TV mouth) on mine and eight hours ahead of me behind a desk.

Oh wait no, no. That's Traffic.

Dear Mr. Fantasy,

Play me a tune. Play me a this is how you put your foot on the gas Samuel L Jackson Pulp Fiction Jules Winfield lecture Brett!

I digress.

It's almost 2017!?

It's time for the annual year in review **cough**embellishments****cough**.

I've never been happier in my life with my beautiful wife and beautiful baby daughter who is 16 months. I'm like a Talking Heads song and 'this must be the place.'

Now I've never been good at math, but I started my first year of sobriety this year on February 8, 2016. Today, December 22nd 2016 that's 318 days.

 Although it's been almost three years since my last drink,  I feel that this time around it's been the easiest decision I've made in my young adult romance novel phase of life.

When Peyton Manning won Super bowl 50 and told the camera he was going to have a Bud after trotting off the field, this bud retired from football as well. The football had become hackneyed, a weekend ritual saving grace to remind me (a 33 year old husband, father and Dad, and life coach) that there's a reason Jesus wanted to accomplish everything between that 32-33 age gap.

Jesus: "Guys, hey guys. These sandals don't bode well with the mission ok? I need to like now, right now get a move on. You there! How would you like to be a 'fisher of men' and also make some quality shoe ware  for me?!"

So I retired it. Best decision I made next to driving cross country to start my life, and making the prediction that America would pick reality TV asshole Donald Trump as our next president of the Uni-- yeaaaaaaah.

What a year for reflections huh?

Everyone, and I mean everyone has a selfie-stick this year am I right?

Heckler: "That was five years ago asshole!

 As millennials see no end in sight with the possibility of the Walking Dead becoming a real life documentary, millions of young Americans are opening up their own Thai restaurant called Phuck It, and having one last Hoor-ah!

You might be thinking at this point, "Hey, why does Jesus and Heckler have the same bold faced font and lingo?"

To me, my Jesus was a heckler, heckling out the BS that was people's doubts and trappings of saying this is just how things, 'have to be.'

Me? No, no, I'm not Jesus. I'm a John the Baptist kind of guy. Locusts, honey, warning people of the pending apocalypse of more Fuller House.

(secretly love it.)

Take 2016. Look who died?

Right out of the gate in January bye bye Bowie?! No!

Farewell my dear Prince in April ?! No!

Did the greatest boxer to even live die this year too?!

Astronauts from Ohio?

'Mean Gene' Wilder?

This list is sad to look at but also reminds us of their life work!

Rest in Peace

I saw a FEMME comedy show this year mid year that changed me. Our nation was going through its 5,0000 mass shooting and I needed to see a show. My wife said, 'go', and so not to argue with my beautiful wife I did. I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did because I learned a lot about myself through this show. Mainly how I can annoy the local comedy scene with my Midwest mannered awkwardness.

Also, I gained a good friend who told me about this AMAZING STORY!

I got to meet Dylan. I got to thank him and tell him my story. I even got to try stand up comedy with my good friend on September 12 of this year WHILE Dylan was in attendance at the 907.

I think I made him laugh?

I'll never forget that.

I bought a house a la Canned Heat as 'I'm going down in the country.' But also my wife and I bought a house. There's a reason we are told as students in grade school to put the other person before you in a sentence.

In short exists a 'h' and an 'o 'but also I followed the lead of my wife this year.

This was the year of "EVERYONE FOLLOW BEHIND THE SMART PEOPLE. HOLD! HOLD!"

"THEY MAKE TAKE OUR LIVES BUT THEY"LL NEVER TAKE OUR COFFEEEEEEEEE!"

(Seattle charges the hill, running out of breathe from the 'smoke'. The smoke confuses the opposition and all of a sudden they just want to relax and 'yeah, we should like treat people as people like our man JC did?')

I hope this is the outcome in 2017 as my Midwest bred eyes looked at the city I lived near in go up (like many) in anger over police brutality, hate, and other forms of intolerance.

For me the only life event on the horizon to unlock my last adult achievement before my 'This is 40' cover band (with Paul Rudd on lead) is to finish school, which I will do this quarter. I decided to go a more traditional route and actually be in the class as I take two at Seattle Central Community College in two weeks.

I'm currently enrolled in one and on the waiting list for the second but the wait is a public speaking class and so yeah,
**flips trendy umbrella**
I got this.

What I don't have, with less then thirty days to go, is a clear understanding of what the actual what is going on in our current country? (you know as opposed to a country I might not notice soon?)

I read the news a lot and that grows tiresome. Watching the Cleveland Browns doesn't help.

In fact if I can parallel park these ideas I liken the current political atmospheric uncertainty we face ourselves in as if we, America, gave the Cleveland Browns the number one pick in the draft and we just keep allowing them to Phuck It up.

(I still like this Thai restaurant in my head. **Writes 'Shark Tank Thoughts'**

In 2016 anything happened and it did. <-----------(The kind of statement everyone has always said about any year.)

I guess this means 2017 we are finally going to unpack our shit as a country and collective consciousness to see what white elephant we got this year?

::unwrapping a gift:: ::laughter::cries:::slow cries::mad laughter::

Truth be told I am optimistic. Call me Jack, but I do believe our best days are somewhere over the rainbow, it's just been clouded as of late and I'm wishing for it to come back and rear its magical head to include all.

In the meantime I know we will continue to stay 'in tune' but not 'buy in' to the ever trending puppy dog picture that has become the new form of every bad phobia and 'ist' there is.

Me?

I turn to first my wife and daughter and THEN to comedy and in particular local writers, comedians, various improv troupes and the cast of Seattle Rent (hikes) to make sense of this mad mad world.

A song I used to sing to my very tiny daughter when she was first born (A dad original):

"Everything's ok, Everything's ok.

There's no need to be saddy,

You're right here with your daddy.

Everything's ok, Everything's ok."

(Song is kind of a big deal.)

Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, and Neil Young need not be called. I don't want to make em' feel nervous, even if I am.

Moving on from my suburb spelling and lyrical intellagence. 

Top (fill in number) lists are trite and terrible but let's try it anyway! Here is a list of my top 5 songs of 2016.

    Top 5 songs of 2016

5.) Pretenders-Roadie Man

4.) David Bowie-Girl Loves Me

3.)Beyonce-Formation

2.)Paul Simon-Cool Papa Bell

1.) Bleachbear-Boy

Seattle is loaded with more comedic talent then it has raindrops. Here is just a sample of local comics you need to see like you would the EMP, Pike's Place, The Great Wheel, and that mysterious Bertha. This is just a short list. Google Seattle comedy and your mind will be blown. Think first time you heard Zep, the Cure, or Tears for Fears! These comics will have you spilling tears of laughter! (do you see what I, ha, did, ha there with the...........)................................

 Just some of the many funny Seattle Area Comics to check out in 2017.

1.) Cheri Hagan Hardman

2.) Brett Hamil

3.) Liz Donehue

4.)Levi Manis

5.)Monica Nevi

6.) Andy Iwancio

7.) Luke Severeid
8.) Amani Taylor
9.) Hope Linden
10.) Rachel Walls
11) Todd Kirkwood
12.) Narin Vann
13.) Mary Lou Gamba

All these comics and so many more are amazing in my humble new beginning.

So there you go. I gave up drinking, took up 'my comedy' I'll call it. I write a lot more. I love my job and my wife and small child. Oh, oh I just survived a car crash three days ago!

It's been a great year in review. And as I finish this drivel I just watched a good friend from Ohio take the mic for his first time attempting stand up. Funny as he is, I hope and know, it won't be his last.
I take that spirit into 2017.

To 2017 we go!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Your UFC fighter: Uniformed, Fragile, Comic?

Sincerely,

Action Jackson.

"It's not my job to worry or to think
Not me
I'm more like:
"Everyday I'm here I'm grateful"
and that's the gist of it
Now you may call that a bogus, bullshit, new-age point of view,
But check out my tattoo
Says: "Wall-to-wall fun"
Does everyone know everyone,
Mr. Wall-to-wall fun?"- Paul Simon 'Cool Papa Bell'

Eh uh How Many Coffees you into so far?





How many coffees are you into so far?

This has become my new reworded Seattle phrase to mean, "How are you?"

Now depending on who I am asking the responses will vary from,

"Not so good, only two in."
to
"Oh my Ballard! Only five in!"

Notice the theme? Nothing is good enough. Not even the 520 toll bridge?

Sadly know.*


*<------Look it's a snowflake. Remember when they said no two snowflakes are the same? ***** I see five that appear to be so...........

I digress.


It's colder outside then _______(fill in the blank with something cold)

How many coffees am I into so far?

I've had about three caffeinated libations on the job thus far. I'm doing pretty Queen Anne, thank you.

At least the orb that gives off heat is out. It's a clear sunny day in Redmond. (A sentence that rarely gets typed. Like,

"No bass player needed for local band."

I can play bass, but I can't catch a bass.


RATS!

It has been funny as this Midwestern mannered transplant views people thinking 40 degree sunny weather is somehow the sign of the apocalypse.

This Ohio boy knows that when it gets cold, we get bold.

Shorts weather!

Why not?

The more I can trick myself and take focus off the heating bill and become aware the better.

If I ever did start a cult it would be a sect of people who gain nirvana through medication* brought on by shorts weather in winter.

*Meditation

Tis' the season to complain about anything and everything and so the weather is no shortage. I'm just glad that in my 45 minute commute to work today I only had to  Kurtis BLOW my breaks, about, oh nine hundred times!

No please go at least 12 under the speed limit I beg of you. Nobody behind you Seahawk 12 needs to get to work this morning.

My GPS doesn't take into account people who look at a speed limit like their account balance. 

Wait.....bad example. They WANT to get to zero.

I digress.

Hey the Rolling Stones have a new album out entitled "Black and Blue II" (Our bones are Torn and Frayed)

.....I crack myself up sometimes.....

There's news that an elector from Texas won't actually cast  his ballot for president-elect Donald Trump.

Hey say what you will about the crazy right, they never pulled that crap with Obama. .......ehhhhh

ehhhhhhh....wellll........

It's a good thing we live in a post racial society, free from prejudices and a patriarchal society that just melted (in your mouth) not in your hand (carrying a gun) when Hillary won the popular vote.  

Remember kids, our founding fathers didn't pay their fair share of child support so we're stuck with an archaic system.

Hey even in a representative republic of a democracy you think we'd get it right now and then?

But we'll see.

I learned that DT (as I will now forever call the man) tweeted about Boeing making a 'bad deal' and now the stock is wildin' out with Nick Cannon.

(By the way, my inner soul singer is Mariah Carey's high A) I can hit it. Oh yes, I can!

"E AHHHHH AEHHH AHAHAHHAHAHAHA HEART BREAKER"

"Give me your love, give me your love, give me your love, give me your love"

Give me a break.............



Sponsor or no sponsor, I will not bow down to a corporate master.

I love coffee.

It turns out it's good for you. And I like it how I like the most depressive of thoughts and positive ones.

BLACK.

Such a good flavor to it. It makes the Seattle Freeze.

Give me a double shot of black coffee not chilled on no ice with extra flavor of birch wood please.

One more cup of coffee before the road?

One more cup of coffee before the ghost of Tom Joad?

One more cup of coffee before I use the bathroom again and again*

*I'm working on my Haiku's give me a break. (Kit Kat again?)

Drink up!

"White Stripes! You're like the Monkees with a drinking problem!"-Triumph the Insult Comic









First Of The Month AND Free Coffee?!

**Alarm Rings** ((YAAAAWN)

Hey, It's the first of the month.

I can't not play this song as,

1.) I'm from Cleveland, Ohio (home to the bone, ((and depression)),
and
2.) Is the number that comes after one. (Thank you Jesuit education.)

Also, I never saw Cleveland streets this festive!


How's everyone feeling?

I'm cold. And you can't spell cold without 'old'. Well, I guess you could.

C.

See? It's a c. Little c with a capital L. What's the capital of C? A or B? Sub question:

  A train from Milwaukee (what is this 1902?) leaves the train station at 11:00am and meets up with another train in Chicago at 2:56pm, if they stop for gas and are going 75mph at equal times what time with the train from Milwaukee get to Chicago if the train conductor dies because he's on his third heart attack and fifth Four Loco.?

**Cue thirteen year old boy raising his hand because he's confused at the question. The teacher comes over.**


"Yes you, the dummy who doesn't get word problems? You have a question?"

It's easy to write out the date when it's the first of the month. 12-1-2016. I sometimes forget the year and I think it's still the 90's.

Remember when gas was 1.50?

I digress.

How's everyone feeling?

I feel great. I just bought a house. Well, my wife and I bought a house and a bank gave me a loan that I will never pay back ((laughs to himself, stares out the window))

I just bought a house in Duvall, Washington for over 400,000. In my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio the house might have gone for 40,000. Because that's what Duvall needs, another zero **points to himself**

But, serioulsy folks, is a great album by Joe Walsh. "Tomorrow, I'll make a list for things to do. And when I wake up,

OH OH UH OHHHHH!"

(SERIOUS FACE)

I just completed my first ever sketch writing comedy class at Seattle's Pocket Theater and it was very informative as it was fun!

Being new to the comedy scene of Seattle and comedy in general, after attempting stand up a few times it was a nice change of pace to allow my mind to view different various aspects of my creativity. It beats attempted murder and being a cereal killer. (I'm looking at you Frosted Flakes!)

  Matt Olsen, improv person, writer, performer and teacher offered a class that was both educational and fun. I strongly recommend all illiterate people listening to this audio to search him out. Good guy.

(Good Guy was also the killer doll Chuckie's manufacturer in the Matell Documentary movie Child's Play, so just fair warning. He might be your 'Friend to the end.")

Not actually Matt Olsen (Batteries however, included)

I met a lot of interesting funny people in my creative sketch writing class. Seattle has an abundance of ambivalent, audacious, adjective, vocab words, (I'm smart) people. Most if not all of the people in my class were people AND had a background in theater. (Small criminal backgrounds too, but it was all good.) If I was giving a Rolling Stone review of this class it would have gotten 5 stars and it wasn't even a musical!

I had a great time.

I can't wait, feel the revival of my inner creative spirit (and demons) to get back on stage! Thank you Pocket Theater. I will take what I learned to the stage and hey I think I might actually make a list of things to do as Joe Walsh says and cross of Improv for the things to do.

Soul Sacrafice is a way better song then it is an actual ceremony. Less screaming.

Anyway, Enjoy your first of the month and remember that the word enjoy doesn't need to be capitalized if you grammmmer naxis are keeping score.

As always, this is your captain Action Jackson signing the blues and looking for clues of a news that isn't dry, but I'll stay sly, I'm your guy. I aint no jerk, and I'm back to work.....

Piece.

Jack "Francis" Gorbett IV 'The Fourth!' 'Make way!'