Well, it looks like I'm knee-deep in this comedy thing now . . . Last night, I opened for a cross dressing magician and a rock and roll ventriloquist, tonight I'm performing at a Chinese restaurant, and Sunday I'm reaching the zenith of my career by opening for Tim Northern. Ah yes, the empire is growing, one Chinese restaurant at a time . . .

What is it about performing? I think it's something that everybody fantasizes about doing, getting the cajones to go up in front of a large group of people and have them love you in return. Well, let me clear some things up for you non-performers out there:

1) The crowds are rarely large enough for proper adulation; and 2) The pay sucks.

You see, in these 3 shows that I'm doing over the next few days, I will in all likelihood receive the whopping amount of 0 dollars. ZERO. And I won't even get free drinks out of it. "Free drinks" is the Ultimate Comedy Perk (mainly because there aren't many comedy groupies.)

So why do I do it? Why do I go up in front of tens of ones of people and act like a jackass, then come and write weird and inflammatory things on my sparsely populated web site? The answer is simple:

I'm a big, attention-craving, whiny little baby.

That's pretty much it. We could go into all kinds of psychological reasons why I do comedy; We could probe my family's past and see that I use comedy as some kind of outlet that allows me to suckle on my inner teat. But no, the answer is much simpler than that, and can be boiled down to 3 words: "LOOK AT ME!"

I love comedy, and I love the comedians that I've come to know here in the Nashville area (except for Keith Alberstadt). I hope you come on down and the weird things that we do, and I like to think that just by reading this column, you've looked at me a little bit more. And really, what else can an fame-coveting glory hog ask for?

So, if you come to one of my shows and you come up to me afterwards and say, "Hey, you're the guy that made my wife nauseous, you told a coupla funny jokes, too!", well, forgive me if a tear trickles from my eye. Making your wife nauseous is my dream, and soon, I hope to make all of you nauseous through my dumb-ass antics. So hard . . . to type . . . blinded . . . by tears . . .

This is the MangyDog, over and out.