All week Laura has been humoring me with the following responses to my questions...

Me: "What are we doing Saturday?"
Laura: "Going to the Samurai Exhibit."
Me: "Why?"
Laura: "Because Samurai are Awesome."

You won't be surprised to learn that Saturday morning we headed to the Asian Art Museum to see the exhibit on Samurai. The exhibit was good, but these exhibits always miss the mark. By that I mean, if you're going to take the time to have an exhibit, then take the time to explain what we should be appreciating. Putting a katana in a case and saying "Here is a Katana from 1550" isn't worthwhile.

If I see a katana on display, I know what I'm looking at. But it is the museum's job to tell my why I should appreciate it, and they always fail. For instance, the following video clip explains everything you need to know about katanas if you're going to such an exhibit. And not one sentence of this was covered in the entire exhibit.

The thing I love the most about Japanese culture is that everything is raised to an art form. And every task in a process is divided up, and each task has a master.

The guy who smelts melt for katanas is a a master smelter whose family has smelted for hundreds of years.

The guy who crafts the blade is a master swordsmith whose family has crafted blades for hundreds of years.

The guy who sharpens and polishes the sword is a master sharpener whose family has sharpened blades for hundreds of years.

Its like the song "There is a hole in the middle of the sea." Except in this hole is some master craftsman, and on top of him is another craftsman. This stacking-of-people experience is why they were able to create the most technologically advanced blade the history has probably ever seen.

And that doesn't go just for crafting swords. For example, Samurai loved tea. A lot. Apparently being awesome makes you thirsty. They loved tea as much as they enjoyed defending their honor. When they weren't busy fighting and killing, they were busy drinking tea and talking about fighting and killing. Tea wasn't just something you did, it was an entire experience.

There is an art to serving tea, and there are tea serving masters. And you didn't just serve tea in anything, you had special tea sets. And each piece of the tea set had a history and a name. "Welcome to my tea party! Today you'll be drinking from Fred, the tea cup, who is filled by Frank the tea kettle." The lengths to which they carry this is almost absurd. But I'm serious. I saw teacups that have histories that can be traced back 800 years.

If you broke a tea cup, you might have it repaired. And a repaired teacup is more previous and valuable than one that isn't because it symbolized that the cup meant enough for you to spend time and money having it repaired. And of course not just anyone repaired it. A master teacup repair guy fixed it. And he didn't use any old adhesive, he used gold. And when your guests came to drink tea, they could ponder why you named your tea pot "Steamy McSteamMuffins", how you might have broken him last time, and whether anyone had invented the roofie yet.

Thanks to my friend Barbara, I got to see Robin Williams perform live at Bimbo's a few weekends ago. Even better is that Bimbos is a very short walk from my apartment.

That man is a loon. A very brilliant loon.

I think Robin's earliest material is his best. To be honest, I don't think I've ever listened to his new material and laughed hard. I enjoy his material, but at this point people go to see Robin just because he is Robin. His material and performance are good, but you know exactly what you're going to see before you get there. And that is fine. I know what Picasso's art will look like before I flip through a book, but I still love the art.

I thought the funniest moment of the night was when Robin bashed his own performance in "Bicentennial man".

Then last weekend, thanks again to Barbara, I got see Arj Barker from Flight of the Conchords. A great show. And he was on stage forever. And I almost go to meet him (a friend of a friend grew up with Arj and was at the show too).

On the other hand, I'm not sure that meeting Arj Barker would have added anything meaningful to my life.

I tried to write about several other things tonight, but wow - am I out of the habit of.

For numerous reasons, including her humor, Anna is an important friend of mine.

Alright, here are the videos from my last two open-mic nights.

Watch This One - Last Wednesday's performance:
Things you need to know - I'm still trying to find my balance between edgy and absurd. Also, my shirt has a picture of a microphone on it.

This one I find Painful - Last Thurday's Performance:
The crowd was small and ridiculously good looking. I'm serious, every girl was like a 9 out of 10, and every guy there looked like he could date a 9 girl. I should have just riffed with the crowd because they didn't like edgy stuff, so I lost them right after the VH1 joke. And I had just thought of the vegetarian bit at the end about 5 minutes before going on stage. I had no clue where I was going with it.

Nothing will make you doubt yourself more than watching your own stand-up comedy routines.

The experience you have on stage versus the experience the audience has are two completely different things. The trick of the balancing act is to find out where they match up. The laughs the timing, the jokes that worked, the jokes that didn't - they're different from the performer's perspective than they are the audience.

The hardest part of stand-up comedy, other than remembering the hyphen in the word at 2:38am, is realzing what you think worked and what didn't work are not the same when compared to the audience's reactions.

I thought my Wednesday and Thursday night sets were pretty good. But then I tried to watch the videos and I could hardly finish them.

Perhaps I'm just being hard on myself, but I expected more. Then again, if you asked me who I do stand-up for - why I'm actually on stage - I'd list the people who hold me to the highest standards.

I'm not refined enough yet to pull off the absurdity of Patton Oswalt or Ellen Degeneres. But I think that is where I feel most at home - in all of my moments of absurdity. On the other hand, I've only been up 5 times.

I think I am getting better - much better - and I like the direction my material is going. I've just not found my sweet spot yet. Salave say the olds folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

Laura asked me to write a birthday message to our friend Alisonn, and this is what I wrote...

"Dear Alisonn with two n's,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! You're 24 (years)! Or as I like to call it 2x2x2x3. If you're wondering why this message is so good, well - I just showered and put on clean underwear. Yes, this card is clean underwear fresh or `underwondearful' as I call it.

I asked Laura how to spell "underwear" [wear vs ware], and now she is looking at me funny. Okay, for real: Happy Birthday! I hope you have a wonderful day full of good cheer and celebration (put on clean roos!). We miss you lots and wish you the best!

Skid mark Free,
-Seth"

If you'd like me to write your friend a birthday card, send me a card addressed to your friend, I'll write the card and send it out. I promise not to divulge state secrets, swear (unless you request it), or be offensive. At Christmas I wrote a card to our friend Jeff - it used the word "vagina" in it (an appropriate usage of it). Laura has finally stopped asking what I'm writing about when I write cards. She knows the risk involved and has accepted it as a fact of life.

I am not making this story up. A few months ago in China a boss was having an affair
with his secretary. The boss's wife had grown suspicious and had hired a private investigator.
He followed the couple to a park and witnessed this strange set of events:

• The couple went to the park, and the secretary proceeded to give the boss oral sex
• That is when a van started backing up
• The private investigator thought "Surely the driver sees the car. There is no way that van is going to backup in to the car...
• Causing the secretary to bite the man's penis
• The she ran out of the car with blood on her face
• And the boss had to be taken to the hospital

I think this is pretty funny because in my mind there is a van driver in China who spends his
time in parks backing in to vehicles he suspects are being used for vehicular sex. And I'm proud of this
guy for bringing a new hobby to the people who own vans and hang out in parks. It is nice to see someone
break the creeepy-guy-in-a-van-at-the-park stereotype.

Imagine the conversations that hobby would bring up...
Bob, remember that time you ran that stop sign?

Well remember the time you backed in to a blow job?

And imagine what the van driver thought when he got out of the car to exchange insurance information and a woman covered in blood started running around the car like a headless chicken (oh, that is a good pun, isn't it?). He thought "Holy shit! I hit a car with a vampire woman in it! Ahhhhh!," squealed his tires, and took off the opposite direction.

The best part of the article, which I read in the Weird section of Metro.co.uk, is that they
included this image for those of you who don't know what a couple making love in a car might look like:

Metro.co.uk is so devoted to bringing you the most accurate park related news that they've hired people
to reenact it for you. Somewhere out there, a man and a woman have this picture on their resume.

I've decided to take a new direction in my life. I'm going to become an elite CIA operative in China. Then I'm going to reenact all of the CIA handoffs Julia Child performed and blog about each experience. Do you think that is crazy?

The title of this post is clever on all sorts of levels. I thought I should point that out.

Today at lunch I turned a Napkin in to art. Then I went around and made turkey at several co-workers' desks. Most of them seemed baffled*, but I believe they were entertained to see genius at work.

* Actual quotes from co-workers:
Eric: "What the fuck?"
Aaron: "......."

Yes, I am that handsome fellow in the 3 Keyboard Cat Moon shirt. That shirt fucking rocks. A few weeks ago Kylie urged me to purchase this shirt (talk about a true friend). I bought it on her impulse encouragement, and it has been an incredible investment.

Today Laura and I made the 7 block pilgrimage to the In-n-Out Burger at Pier 41. As we walked, several people on the street stopped to ask about or compliment the shirt. And as we were in line a very nice young lady asked if she could photograph my shirt so she could blog about it later.

Being the attention-seeking addict that I am, I said yes. And the picture above is completely hers. (I hope you don't mind Adrienne!). Her blog isn't long, or sappy, or rambling - it is just nice. She and her beau seemed like very cool people, and it was fun to have a random encounter.

After In-n-Out Laura and I headed to a birthday BBQ, where the shirt was met with great reception.

I hypothesize that if I were to wear the 3 Keyboard Cat Moon shirt and my Vibram Five-Finger shoes at the same time, people around the city in the wake of my path would start to spontaneously combust. It is an experiment I'm willing to take on, but before I start setting people on fire, I'm going to wait until the California fire season is over.

Last weekend I wore my Vibram's to the Giants game (Giants vs Reds), and people kept asking me about my shoes any time I got up. At this point Vibram needs to hire me as an official spokesman. I love it when my odd purchase and impulses pay off, because in the end, I do a lot of these things just to have interesting stories.... to blog about later.