Living Proof

Hearing of Greg Giraldo’s passing brought up a lot of emotions for me. Many people seem to think all comedians in whatever medium they work in are all happy & giggly idiots, even in their personal lives. Again, as I’ve said in my previous post , they seem “put together” and more equip to handle the hard stuff in life. ...They’re not. In fact, it’s the total opposite. Most comedians are very sad. They’re aspirations are more than just standing up on stage trying to make people laugh; they want more. Most aspire to be in movies or have their own talk show, perhaps star in a sitcom. My friend Adam Kontras had put a status message about his sadness regarding Greg Giraldo’s death. In a Youtube video, Adam shared his heart with the world, trying to hold back tears and said, “I was in a really difficult place earlier this month and I kinda didn’t let on how bad it was...and how isolated I was...and umm, how I stared at this blue bottle of sleeping pills for way too long...and how I calle...

There’s a quote by Marilyn Monroe that I have always loved: "...if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best” , but most people blurt it out without quoting it word for word, or at least, leaving out the beginning part, which to me is the most important part of the entire quote because its honesty speaks volumes. The full quote is, “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." I find many people, including myself, have a hard time quoting that first part, because we don’t want to be viewed as impatient, selfish and hard to handle, when in fact, if we don’t admit this to ourselves, we’ll never figure out what we’re doing wrong or at least making more room for improvement. We’ll always have people pointing it out for us, leaving us to defend ourselves, almost in a ...