My new album is available now! You can pick it up on iTunes, or, if you want a hard copy, CD Baby:

Check out the website of Max Miller-Loran who co-produced the album. Huge thanks to the long list of talented musicians, engineers, and visual artists who collaborated on the project. This was a massive group effort. And if you got some extra time, check out the youtube videos associated with the album.

My brand new solo theater piece Where the Magic Happens is going up in Boston in December. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage, and directed by Jim Fagan, the show is two nights only at the Boston Center for the Arts Calderwood Pavilion. It’s a great space and a great theater company and I really hope you can make it. This is my last performance in Boston before I move to Los Angeles at the end of December!

Tons of new material, some old favorites, and interactive elements, info on the show and ticketing is available at the SpeakEasy website.

flier by Jon Campolo

As a frequent lame punster, I have a deep appreciation for half-baked turns of phrase. I saw a couple doozies today on my way home in Boston. This may be the beginning of a series.

On the train:

Outside urban youth tennis camp, ‘Tenacity’ (get it? get it?):

A New York comedian’s mercy
goes only as far as his slurs– he
takes poetry down
but that’s easy to clown
(like the fact that he grew up in Jersey)

                     BA-ZING!

NOT LAVERNE!!!

but your son is so cute…and you’re the man…

curses.

Let me preface this by saying that I will not be in town during graduation. So don’t worry seniors– this is only an attempt get fake internet attention, not actual, real-life attention. I wouldn’t want to spoil your passage into unemployment.

__________________________________________

My school, Emerson College, announced that Blair Underwood will be speaking at commencement on May 18th. 

Funny story. When I performed at the NAACP Image Awards in February, Mos Def was scheduled to introduce my act. But Mr. Def was late getting backstage, so Blair Underwood had to do it. As you can see, he really knocked it out of the park:

And although I find the name gaffe funnier than being a potential muckraker, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the irony of the selection (including civil rights icon John Lewis), given the scrutiny Emerson is under… by a local NAACP branch. The school newspaper last month:

“A local NAACP branch and an Emerson student organization are pressuring Emerson’s administration to grant tenure to Professors Roger House and Pierre Desir, who have alleged their applications to become associate professors were denied because they are black. [...] They also noted that Emerson has not tenured and promoted a black male professor in its 129-year history.”

Whoops.

Sign my online petition to support me for this prestigious role! I’m also taking suggestions for my pre-planned introductory screw-up. So far I’ve got Blarr, and Blair Underwear.

Good news! I have finally learned the cause of our national economic crisis. At last I understand why millions of Americans are out of work and why families from coast to coast are losing their homes– why we’re slipping into third world status before we even got a seventh season of My Super Sweet 16. And the answer was right in front of my snout the whole time.

Was it predatory lending?
No.
Gay marriage?
No.
Rap music?
Not this time.

Nope… It’s me. Your friend George. Royally fucking this country up, one whiny little poem at a time.

Let me explain…
Ever heard of the Pig Book?

Neither had I, until yesterday. The Congressional Pig Book Summary is published annually by “non-partisan,” “non-profit” watchdog group Citizen’s Against Government Waste (CAGW). The 57-page volume trades on the power of reverse-psychology, describing itself as “The Book Washington Doesn’t Want You to Read.” Nice. (I think I’m going to start going by “The Guy Your Parents Don’t Want You to Bang”). This year’s version, released last week, details several hundred of the 10,160 projects at a cost of 19.6 billion that congress slipped into legislation to appease their bases. The Pig Book Summary highlights the juiciest, most outrageous incinerations of taxpayer dollars.

Here’s where things get a bit odd. Apparently, out of the nearly twenty billion dollars congress scared up, the honorarium paid to me by one of the colleges I performed at deserved extensive coverage.

Read it to believe it:

“$5,750,000 for nine projects by House appropriator Rodney Frelinghuysen (R- N.J.), including:  $1,100,000 for the Drew University Environmental Science Initiative; [...] On March 26, the department hosted spoken word artist George Watsky who, according to the department’s website, ‘is deeply involved in the sustainability movement and whose work highlights both the frustrations and humor of modern life.’ In one of Watsky’s spoken word performances, he blames Hurricane Katrina on global warming and says we are ‘driving ourselves off a cliff with a bag of money in the trunk.’”

Fuckin’ A, right?

This is my second time being mentioned negatively in conservative media, and bless the redemptive power of time, I’m starting to come around to what a toolish cipher I am. 

Pig Book’s release last week was covered on CNN, FOX, and I’m assuming plenty of other media outlets. Citizens Against Government Waste was founded by multimillionaire investor J. Peter Grace after being tapped by Ronald Reagan to cut government spending. At the time, Reagan implored “Be bold. We want your team to work like tireless bloodhounds. Don’t leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.” Well the bloodhounds finally turned the stone I was hiding under, so consider me rooted out.

To give you a better sense of who CAGW is today, here’s an actual screen shot from the group’s Myspace page:

Note the the multitude of friends, the patriots at the top, and the first comment. Everything about the image yells “America!” at the top of it’s lungs. I would feel a rush of pride if my overwhelming guilt wasn’t so crippling right now.

I think it’s worth addressing the content of the work in question, because the Pig Book points to many environmental measures as pork. In hindsight, I now see how violently ignorant my insinuations were. The line in question, in a poem that accepts climate change as fact, is “tell New Orleans that coincidence destroyed the levees, but look up at your sky back home. Our cities are changing.” I am flattered that a senior official at CAGW spent some time browsing through my youtube videos, and am glad that their commitment to my work has not stopped them from honing their expertise on climate change.

So, is there a chance that global warming is in fact contributing to strengthening hurricane systems globally? Recent articles from fringe publications “TIME Magazine,” “National Geographic,” and “USA Today” suggest yes. But I will admit that there is disagreement on the matter, and radical hippy rags aside, everyone knows that the levees broke because of massive government spending. Had the feds dared to spend even less on those pork walls, the residents of New Orleans would never have been such stupid suckers to stick around in the first place.

There was some other tasty “green” swine in the 2009 report, including:

$47,575 for the Harlem United wind power project.

According to Harlem United’s annual report, the community AIDS Center in New York submitted proposals to fund a vertical axis wind-turbine to generate additional electricity for the facility. The proposed turbine makes the facility a “green” building and the first building in New York City with this model turbine.

Uh…what? First of all, spending on the terminally ill is clearly wasteful and disrespectful to those of us with long lives to look forward to. And secondly, wind-turbine? Why bother with a long-term commitment to inner-city environmentalism? It’s not like poor neighborhoods bear the brunt of pollution and natural disasters. Right, Ninth Ward?

$951,500 for downtown Detroit energy efficient street lamps.

Matt Bandyk of U.S. News and World Report bravely stepped behind Pig Book‘s unmasking of this wasteful measure last week, writing, “Is this the top issue that Detroit residents want addressed, or might they have a few more pressing concerns?” Take that bitches! Just because energy efficiency is a cost-saving tactic that allows a city to spend less in the long-term doesn’t mean these fancy-lamp-loving limousine liberals can hang a chandelier in front of every organic co-op market and acupuncture center in Detroit.

Next you’re gonna tell me that just because Bandyk, as he discloses in his article, interned at CAGW during college, that his endorsement is somehow tainted. On further research, not only did Bandyk intern there, he also has a profile and posted recruitment letter on CAGW’s website. Word for word, his listed hobbies are “Discussing libertarian philosophy and random fruitings.” His letter implores, “Are words like ‘boondoggle’ and ‘largesse’ part of your daily vocabulary? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, an internship at Citizens Against Government Waste may be right for you.” I don’t know what those big words mean, and I haven’t seen the movie he’s misquoting in years, but if my intuition is right about “random fruitings”, Matt, meet me at Larry Craig’s airport bathroom stall– I’ll be the one whispering Ron Paul quotes and bitching about what a cheap date you’re gonna be.

Of course, the Pig Book doesn’t limit itself to protecting our country from the natural environment. They also take special pride in saving honest Americans from the arts. Some of their finds:

* $95,000 for the Canton Symphony Orchestra Association in Ohio.

* $240,000 for the Shubert Performing Arts Center in Minneapolis.

* $80,750 for site improvements and a new facility for the Santa Fe Teen Arts Center, Warehouse21, in Santa Fe.

Greedy desert teens! Why can’t they hang out on the streets like normal kinds? I guess some people are just take, take, take when it comes to paintin’ and dancin’ around. We can’t let non-profit organizations like Youth Speaks teach our children to do stupid things, like empower themselves to follow careers in the arts (or politics). They might turn out to be leaches like me, sucking taxpayer dollars down their wordholes. After all, if art’s not profitable, it’s not worthwhile. it’s probably not really art. Just ask the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus.

Thanks Pig Book for showing me the light! I’m ready to repent.

                                   (artist’s rendering)

…was ME!

Had a crazy last couple of weeks. I was a first alternate to perform NACA National, a big college booking conference in Tennessee, so I went to Nashville to try my luck, but i didn’t get on.

But no worries. I’m still on a high from a couple days earlier, when I got to perform, along with Josh Bennett and Ben Alisuag at the NAACP Image Awards on FOX to honor Russell Simmons’ Vanguard Award. Other performers included Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Will.I. Am and Seal. Al Gore received an award, and Dakota Fanning helped accept for The Secret Life of Bees. So, by the smallest sliver of a shade, I was saved from being the palest person on stage.

Great news! A new play of mine, Harold’s Fall or King Will, was selected as the 2009 Rod Parker awardee!

That means my play will receive a full scale production for Newfest at Emerson College (Semel Theater) April 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (including a Saturday matinee).

The show will be directed by Joe Antoun of Centastage. If you find yourself in Boston or can give yourself an excuse to come, please do! I am so excited for this opportunity and will continue to update with more information.

It’s never too early to buy tickets!

So I was back in the saddle driving again last week in a biggish trot through the midwest. It was more driving than I expected. 7 college shows through Iowa and North and South Dakota. It was about 2,000 miles overall, essentially like driving from New York to Denver. The thing I overlooked was that the Dakotas are not near any reasonably priced airports. My show at University of North Dakota was 100 miles North OF FARGO. I thought Fargo was so far North it was like, a US territory on the other side of Canada.

Well, since moving to Boston I haven’t had a car, so it was important for me to get my jones for horsepower back– my roadkill blood lust. I needed to bring back the Volvo Racer mindset.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for the Iowa Highway Patrol, I got my badass road warrior cred back as soon as I felt that seductive touch of synthetic rental car leather against my weathered skin. I felt that old familiar tug, and try as they might, I was a little too fast for the corn husking coppers. So fast, I got pulled over twice. And got two WRITTEN WARNINGS, mothafucka. One for speeding (76 MPH in a 70 zone), and one for making an illegal right turn against red (although I did come to a complete stop, signal properly and look both ways).

Sorry Iowa PD, you just got Waassked.