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Underground Room

Written by Jon Baker and Matt Baker (no relation)

In my life, I have met so many unique people. From a world record holding chainsaw juggler, to the inventor of the deep-fried Twinkie, to the man who inspired the song “Spoonman.” I’m not just talking about people who show up on my Facebook and Twitter pages, but people who have actually played a role in my life, people I have been honored to call my friends, the type of people that I would help on the drop of a dime.  This is a story about the legend of Jon Baker.

Part 1 – The Jon Con

My old friend Jon Baker (no relation) and I were in a band together called the Interstate Hikers. Not the worst of names for a band, but it certainly illustrates the fact that we had no idea what we were doing. Interstate Hikers? Sounds like a special on 60 Minutes. “Tonight on 60 Minutes: Interstate Hikers—green transportation or a band of homeless vagabonds looking to rob you?” Although our name was not great, it was certainly better then the music we played.

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Since the four of us liked drugs, starting a band seemed natural. What we lacked in music ability we made up for in aptitude for conjuring up ways of getting money to spend on drugs. From pooling our lunch allowances and picking up recyclable cans on the roadside to hawking our parents’ stuff, nothing was sacred in our quest for eternal hallucination.

During one such hallucination, it became perfectly clear that we needed to spend less time making money to get high and more time actually getting high. That’s when Jon came up with the idea of a perfect con.

Usually, our ideas for the infamous get-rich-quick scheme involved an old lady, pantyhose and a potato gun, but Jon’s plan had what all of our previous ideas lacked: brains behind it. Here’s how it worked: Jon printed out a pieces of paper with future dates on them. A person would give Jon any amount of money they desired, and they would receive the dated piece of paper with his signature guarantee. If that person presented the signed note to Jon on the date indicated, he would give them four times the amount they originally invested. He called this con the Back of the Alley Banker.

Since we had been stuck in low-end cons that would produce maybe $20 at a time, naturally we were beaming with excitement when Jon showed the band his giant wad of cash. He held it in his hands like it was some sort of a fragile magic lamp; one that would grant him the wish he had always dreamed of. We stood in silence, eyes wide and staring, like it was the first boobs we had ever seen, dreaming of a future filled with hallucinations and enough drugs to kill a small horse. However, Jon ignored his bandmates’ pleading cries to spend the money on beer, drugs and giant crates of Costco muffins; instead, he elected to spend it on something he had always dreamed of doing: building an underground room.

Unbeknownst to me, this plan was 3 years in the waiting.  Jon had been charting, drawing schematics, and crafting his plan since he was 14. His mom never gave him permission to build the underground room, and so, at the age of 17, Jon’s defiance level was at an all-time high. With his mom leaving for a month on a work retreat, Jon attempted to seize his dream, which in Latin is called carpe dreamin. If given a month home alone, most 17-year-olds would spend that time watching re-runs of Looney Tunes naked and trying to figure out how to get laid. That is what made Jon so unique; he was to spend the next 4 weeks of freedom digging a giant hole in his mom’s backyard.

We all doubted his bizarre plan, but in the summer of ’99, the construction began. Operations were running as smooth as a sanded-down baby’s bottom, and by the end of the first week, Jon had dug a hole the size of a midget standing on top of a MINI Cooper. Word of his project reached the kids in the neighborhood and they quickly gave him the nickname, “The Ground General.”

At the end of the first week, Jon ran into his first setback. He realized one small detail of his master plan for an underground matrix had been glossed over: where to put the dirt he had unearthed? Not one to panick, he decided to put it where most people would put the dirt from their underground rooms: in between his and his neighbor’s fences.  Operations were back on, as Jon began piling mounds of dirt in the empty space between the fences. A second problem quickly arose and that was that the solution to the first problem was not that great. The mound of dirt had begun to cause the fences to bulge like Kirstie Alley eating an Oreo. His neighbors noticed and threatened to call the police if Jon did not do something about it.

Jon was at now at a crossroads. He had nowhere to put the soil, and there was no way he was going to give up on his dream due to some small logistic. So he kept digging. Soon, what looked like two side-by-side models of Mt. Vesuvius were visible over the top of the fence. And still he kept digging. The plan was to tell his mom that the dirt was from some landscaping he had done while she was away. Not the best plan, but knowing Jon, we all knew he would somehow make it work.

Seriously behind schedule, Jon began to work day in and day out, busting his ass to finish the room before his mom got home. With only a week left before her return, the project was only half finished and new problems kept arising; the biggest being that the dirt walls kept caving in, forcing Jon to dig out wheelbarrows full of dirt on a daily basis. Jon was working harder then a Mexican donkey to dig his hole, which far surpassed his careful renderings and had grown to the size of a short yellow school bus. In this gaping hole, with only 2 days until his mom’s inevitable return, Jon began to build the room. Using the money he conned (about $200), he bought the wood and went to work on framing an enclosed box.

The night before his mother was scheduled to return, Jon finished his pièce de résistance, a structure that would change the meaning of the term man cave forever and would cement his name in the neighborhood folklore. Jon deserved it. This was not just your run-of-the-mill underground room. It had everything you would want in a bedroom, let alone an underground bedroom. Jon had dug a trench from the house to his new hideout, which allowed him to run extension cords to power his TV, phone and lights. He threw in a bench, a bookshelf, a futon and a Plexiglas window that looked out into the soil. 9035_180471555475_554235475_4169344_7010837_n

From the outside, there was no way to tell there was a room below the surface. Jon had neatly re-laid the original sod.  The only way to enter the room was through a flat hatch door that was covered with some dead shrubs. It was like a pot grower’s wet dream. A hideout that would make Anne Frank say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The only thing that indicated something remotely suspicious were the gargantuan piles of dirt that looked like an unfinished dirt sculpture of Dolly Parton. Surely his mom would buy the landscaping story. Right?

I asked Jon to explain to me what happened when his mom came home and he wrote this:

“At first it was my intention to keep the underground room a secret. That plan briefly worked. When my mom came home, she immediately noticed the comically sized primitive pyramids of dirt that were once the intestines of the underground room. She asked, “Where in the world did all the dirt come from?” I replied, “Well, I’ve been doing some weeding.” For whatever reason she left it at that. However, the next day she brought it up again, pointing out the absurdity in my reply. “Well, Ma,” I said, “Do you really want to know?”  “Yes,” she replied, “Ok, follow me,” I said and I led her to where the trap door to the room was. I asked her if she noticed anything strange. “Well, it looks as if you’ve Rototilled the ground or something.” I kicked aside the brush, revealing to her for the first time the door that would lead her into a new understanding of her only child. “Now do you notice anything strange?” This was met by only silence. “Here lift the handle,” I suggested. It wasn’t until 3 days 9035_180471325475_554235475_4169343_1967265_nlater that she approached me and said, “You know, Jonathan, it’s actually quite impressive what you did. I wish you hadn’t done it behind my back, but I’m impressed.”

Jon lived in the underground room for 3 months, until the winter rains arrived and the room’s only structural flaw was revealed: the flat roof necessitated an interior gutter system to allow the inhabitants to live comfortably. But by then, Jon, now 18, could finally move out without a co-sign on a lease, rendering the underground room’s main purpose obsolete. Water filling the room daily, Jon decided to abandon his baby to live in something more conventional: something above ground.

Jon’s room remained in his mom’s backyard and the contentious dirt piles remained lodged between the two fences. Over the next 2 ½ years, neglected, the underground room accumulated a horror film’s worth of snakes, slugs and spiders, eventually deteriorating into a miniature swimming pool of cess, until the day Jon’s mother unilaterally condemned it. Jon returned and, over a couple of visits, refilled the hole with the same dirt he had dug out so many summers before. Why, I wondered, didn’t he just spend the money on drugs?

When I think about Jon’s room now, I imagine a scene 200 years in the future. I visualize the face of a man as he accidentally digs up this underground fortress. I envision the excitement he will encounter as he uncovers the treasure that will make him rich and give historians of his day crucial information about the people who inhabited the land so many years before. Camera crews arrive, speculating about what could be inside: aliens, a king’s tomb, maybe artifacts of the ’90s. The whole world watches on live TV in anticipation. Then, I picture the disappointment on everyone’s faces as they open the hatch and begin the gridded excavation, only to find an abandoned 9x9x9 room with nothing in it but a High Times 9035_180471700475_554235475_4169345_2101968_nmagazine and a Plexiglas window looking out into the dirt.

The scene will cause the kind of laugh that happens only years after a joke’s inception, like an Andy Kaufman skit.

Now I understand why Jon didn’t spend the $200 from his con on drugs that would wear off in 300 hours and instead spent it on something he knew would be hilarious for centuries: the underground room

 

 

 

 

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Prank backfiring on me

To this day I still struggle with authority, but not nearly as much as when I was growing up. My friend Marcus, and I would always get in trouble. We were mischievous youth. We would do whatever we could to get in trouble. We were like the real life, non-redneck, bike riding, and English-speaking version of The Dukes of Hazard.  Once we lit a string of fireworks off on a friend’s porch at 2 in the morning. We thought it was hilarious until our friend came to school the next daykidflip telling us the crazy story of what had happened at his house the night before.  He explained that someone lit fireworks off on his porch, and the gunshot sounds the fireworks made, triggered a war flashback for his dad. His father ended up jumping through a window as he dove for cover. His dad was ok, but we never told our friend who had lit the fireworks.

Naturally, like most of the people you grow up with, over time you loose touch. I had not seen Marcus in about 3 years, or one grateful dead guitar solo. Thanks to the addictive powers of Facebook, I knew he still lived in our hometown, and I was shocked to find out that his occupation was a police officer. I nearly shissed myself (shit and piss at the same time,) but thought it might be a joke; so I e-mailed Marcus. As I was sending the message the same thought kept running through my mind, “There is no way Marcus would become a cop.” That is like the Pope coming out and saying, “Ha, Ha suckers, I’m an atheist.” Or Tom Cruise coming out and saying he was straight; it would confuse the masses, as much as the success of Keanu Reaves does. I guess what I am saying is there is no way that he could have become a cop. This is a man who had a conviction for disestablishmentarianism.  This was my accomplice in all of my childhood troubles, and here he was going against everything we hated. He was flip flopping more than a democratic fish out of water.

I waited in anticipation for his response. Sure enough, there sitting in my inbox was his written confession with the title “I am a cop.” It was sad to witness the end to what was truly one of the best masterminds of juvenile delinquency ever. This was the man who provided the bike in the great baseball card heist of 1991. The same man who was the brains behind the stealth operation to rob our school store of all their candy. This was a dark day in the history of mislead youth. He didn’t really say why he became a cop in his e-mail, all he said was that he was trying to right his wrongs and make a difference. I mean, I totally understand. I am not one for breaking the law anymore either. Outside of getting caught masturbating by the Chinese government and having two warrants funny-kid-boy-toy-car-cops-police-pulled-over-stay-in-sir-picsfor my arrest in different states, I haven’t had problems with the law in a long time. I e-mailed him back, wishing him all the best and said to give me a break if he ever had to arrest me. He responded with one sentence that made me smile, “I always got your back.” Note: That statement is the premise for my reasoning of the events below.

It was August of 2008, and I traveled home for a few days to see my new godson. Usually when I am home, I have to borrow a car or have people chauffeur me around like I am Mrs. Daisy. This trip; being in August, I did not want to burden anyone, so I borrowed my friend’s bike to get myself around town. It had been 2 years since my life changing facebook moment with my old friend Marcus. We had not really talked over those 2 years and I had not planned to call him when I was in town. I knew he was doing well from his facebook status updates. He would post stuff like; “Arrested two transients today.” Or, “Man, I love giving tickets to Jaywalkers.”My first night home, I went out drinking with my friends till about two in the morning. I was pretty tipsy and had to ride my bike 25 minutes home. I don’t know if you have ever ridden a bike drunk, but second only to not calling your ex’s, it has got to be the hardest thing to do intoxicated. I am convinced it should be part of the drunk driving test. You get pulled over in your car and instead of running you through a bunch of ridiculous tests, they just hand you a bike and say, “Here try and stay on this.” As I was unintentionally slalom skiing the lanes of the empty roads on my bike, I passed an empty parking lot with two police cars just hanging out in it. Seeing the cops, I decided it was a good time to see if one of them was my old friend Marcus. I didn’t think about calling him or stopping by his house; which is a block from mine, I just decided to ride my drunken ass right up to the cops and see if it was my friend. It was probably the stupidest thing I had done since I paid $50 to see the Barenaked Ladies; not knowing they were a band.

I approached the cars and once I got close to them I gracefully jumped off my bike. I was so graceful; I would make Madonna falling off stage look like a ballerina move in the Nutcracker. I don’t know if you have ever approached a cop car at two in the morning, but they don’t respond so well. They are not used to it. They are used to people bolting at the very site of them, so at the site of me coming, they leaped out of their car. They jumped out of their seats like I was approaching them with a platter of maple bars with bacon on them. I haven’t seen dodging like that since I watched the Republican Presidential Debate. At any rate, I was disappointed to see neither of them were Marcus. I explained to them, the reason I came over and asked if they knew him? They This_05623a_1184833laughed and said that he was a good friend. They told me he was actually working the same shift that night. They asked if I wanted to call him to say hi. It took a good 5 seconds for that information to reach my dehydrated brain, and while I was processing the question the bad idea section of my brain continued to function at levels never seen before. I said, “actually you guys want to play a joke on him?” They lit up like they just won jeopardy and the prize was a lifetime supply of hippies to hassle.  They were excited at the notion of playing a prank on their good friend.

We started brainstorming about different ideas to prank him. They were so into the idea of coming up with an elaborate plan, they completely didn’t notice I was hammered. Anyone in his or her right mind would have known my drunkenness just off of my brainstorming suggestions. One idea was to rob a taco bell drive thru and call it in to Marcus. Another, I wanted to take the cop car for a spin, causing a high speed police chase and when they caught me, I would say, “Ha, ha, Marcus! I got you.” My ideas were so ridiculous; I was shocked when I came up with the one we were eventually going to use. I said we should call Marcus on the radio, and say, “ we just arrested a man named Matt Baker for public indecency (nudity) and he claims he knows you.” The two cops were convinced that it would work.

So the call went in to Marcus’s car, and I listened in on the radio. They told him exactly what we had scripted 3 minutes earlier. All you could hear is silence and then Marcus yelled out, “Alright! I will be right there.” The click of the radio went off and the three of us erupted into a fit of laughter, which quickly subsided because we realized we needed to make the prank even more extreme. 5,6,7 minutes went by, all of which were filled with the three us coming up with ways to dupe Marcus even more. Being more drunk than a frat guy at a football game, I did not hesitate when they proposed to handcuff me and throw me in the back of the car. So there I was, handcuffed, in the back seat, when a cop car; lights blaring, came crashing into the parking lot like every Starsky and Hutch episode I had ever seen. Out jumped Marcus, and I almost lost it right there. Maybe it was the fact I am a performer, or I was so drunk I couldn’t spell my own name right (Matt,) but at the sight of Marcus I took it upon myself to add to the realness of the prank; and started flipping out. I started squirming, kicking the doors and freaking out like I was Michael Richards performing at the Apollo. The two officers could barely keep themselves from laughing. They looked like every fallonJimmy Fallon skit ever on SNL. They were on the verge of loosing it at the panicked look on Marcus’s face. Marcus walks directly up to the door opens it and asks, “Matt, are you alright?” I started to yell at him about the injustice of my arrest and started throwing out words that sober I don’t even know there meanings; let a lone drunk. Things that I thought sounded good at the time. I yelled, “Your friends are egotistical narcissists. They are capitalist Marxist bastards. They are the reason for all the problems in our society.”

Marcus responded, “I am glad you are alright. Let me take care of this.” He walked calmly over to his fellow officers, and asked, “what happened?” The officer (Officer Davis) told him the story about me riding my bike naked and drunk down the street. He started taking artistic liberties, and explained how I was belligerent, and tried head butting him. He had a conviction in his voice that would have made Bill Clinton blush. It was so believable I was almost convinced it was a true story. Marcus was falling for it too. It was like we were professional actors and we had been practicing this moment for months. We were nailing it, even Jesus would say, “now that’s how you nail something.” As they were talking I noticed that Marcus had left the door open. When I saw the door open, my creative juices started flowing. The prank was going so well; I decided to keep it going and kicked the door wide open. I started running, hands still tied behind my back and all I hear behind me is Marcus yelling, “Matt don’t, Matt stop!” I heard the other cops yell, “Tackle him.” I looked back and there was Marcus, right behind me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and stopped me. He looked me in the eye and said, “Matt, you are making this worse for yourself.”He walked me back to the car and I almost forgot this was a prank until the other two cops just burst into man-trumpet-burning-police-carlaughter. They were howling like dogs in heat and Marcus had a look on his face that MasterCard would call, “Priceless.” Once I started laughing, Marcus knew it was a joke and started laughing like he had just done a month load of whippets. I yelled, “We got you” and he pushed me over like he was Elaine from Seinfeld.

Every time the laughter would start to die down, it would just start back up again. We laughed for a good 5 minutes. After our stomachs and throats had settled one of the officers un-cuffed me, while the other was busy radioing the other cops on the force to tell them the story. Marcus threw my bike in the trunk of his car and gave me a ride home. We did some catching up on the drive home and he made me promise I would not do something like that again. We parted ways with a hug and I thought that might be the last time I would see him for a while. I was wrong, because the next night, there was a knock on my parent’s door. I almost shissed myself again, when I saw it was the police chief himself.  I was speechless, while he explained to me that Marcus and the other two officers had been suspended for playing such a prank.  He explained that he needed me to come down to the station and prepare a statement. I obliged and followed him downtown. The whole time I was driving, I was kicking myself for being a drunken idiot. I never intended for those guys to get in trouble. Once I got down to the station, they took me into a little room. They had me write a description of what happened and made me fill out 5 pages of questions pertaining to the “Incident.” After about 90 minutes I finally reached the final question, which read, “Thank you for your time Mr. Baker. It is frustrating when people waste your time for no good reason.  That is why we hope you won’t do it again! Payback rocks. Your friend, Marcus.”

I walked out of the room and saw the police chief, his secretary, the two officers and Marcus just standing there laughing at the look on my face. So, as you read this doesn’t it make you feel good that your tax dollars are going towards such wonderful pranks.

Donating Sperm

I had just finished a show at a theatre in Canada. As I was loading my gear out, I had asked the stage manager if they could lend me a hand. She said, “I’ll tell the Foster kids to do it.” I was taken back for a moment and said, “you know, you don’t have to call them that. They have names.” The women without missing a beat replied, “You are right. They do have a name. Their last name is Foster.” Oh snap. Drop the mic…. All I could think is would she call them that if their dad’s name was Jerry. Or if their last name had been Stephen and Tiffany Black.

Not more then 2 days later I had a conversation with my buddy about his sperm. You know, normal guy talk. He had just been diagnosed with leukemia and him and his wife had been trying to have a second child for a while. They came to the conclusion that if anything were to happen to him, that she would still have a second kid. So, they ended up freezing some of his sperm. Not in an ice cube tray like most of us would do, but at a sperm freezing lab. They actually paid $75 a month to keep hspermtrayis gooey seed in a cryogenic lab surrounded by other potential future confused kids. I was shocked. Not that they would do that, but that it cost $75 a month. Holy shit. That’s a lot of money. I mean do you even know what sort of community it is living in? Who are the neighbors? I guess for that sort of money I would think it would be in some sort of gated community at the least. I would love to see the price plans for this place. For $75 we will hold your love juice. For an extra $25 a month we will take it out on a walk twice a week. And for a extra $50 a month we will read it a bed time story every night. They say that reading to the kid in the womb makes it smarter, think of how much smarter they would be if you read to them while they were still sperm. That’s why I have friends who read to their balls every night.

At any rate, these two occurrences got me wondering if I ever wanted kids? If so, in what capacity? Foster kids? Adopt? Convince a women to like me long enough to raise a child? It didn’t take long to realize that I did not want kids. I think most people have kids out of fear. Fear there won’t be anyone to take care of them when they are older. Fear, that his or her existence won’t be remembered by anyone. Fear that they won’t be loved. Have a kid and if you are somewhat of a decent parent all three of those things are taken care. Either that or they just really want to name something, so they create an object they have the right to name. Like their little patent.

Bike For me, my fear was the idea of not passing on my families   name. My father is an only child and my two older brothers are far from ever persuading a women to let them put their penis inside of them, so I might be the last great hope of the  Baker name carrying on. After weighing my options, I decided that there was a way to potentially solve the continue lineage/now wanting to have a child and ruin my whole life problem, and that was to donate sperm. What a brilliant idea. There are many people out there who can’t have kids for a myriad of reasons, and maybe we could all win. They could have a mini Matt Baker, my family lineage wouldn’t be lost and I don’t have to ever burden the responsibility of raising a child and go on with my easy care free life.

I was all in. I started doing research on donating sperm and found a place that I can’t say for legal reasons, but let’s just say it rhymes with Meattle perm bank… I found out that they pay you $60 every time you make a deposit. $60! What? They are going to pay me to do something I have paid to do in the past. Is this heaven? I was sitting on the golden ticket (no pun intended). I probably have $900 sitting in my trash right now. Seriously folks, why donate plasma when you can make money for doing a thing you do all day anyway? Donatesperm

On the site you can view other donors profiles that are in your category, AKA the competition. Under white, 5’8, athletic, 30 was quite a few profiles. Things next to their names said, “Neurosurgeon,” “Astro Physicist” and “Chemist.” Those careers sounded just as made up as comedy stunt man. In my life I had never felt like the odds were against me. I felt like the 5th member of the Jamaican bobsled team. When you can have doctors and astronauts as your donor, who would ever want a self employed comedian, who dropped out of high school? I could not let that deter me.. How many of them have been on national TV? How many of them played hackysack professionally? How many of them have 37 youtube followers? Which one of those guys did texasninjathief889 call, “Yo. Mad funny Yo”? Me, that’s who! That’s something right? I know there is someone out there that want’s their kid to be creative, funny and awkward all in a good way. Someone out there is going to want to roll the dice in the mystery gene pool game. So I signed myself up.

I was amazed at how many questions there was about education. Things like, “What was your SAT score?” “What was the highest level of education you completed?” This line of questioning spelled big problems for me. I never graduated high school, instead electing to become a comedian and make more money at the age of 18 in one year then my father. Seemed like the Beattle Firm Tank did not care about success and hard work. They just wanted to make sure your DNA got all the credits necessary to graduate college.

sperm choclateAfter I submitted my online application, It did not take long to get a reply. “Mr. Baker thank you for your interest in becoming a sperm donor. We have set up an appointment for you to visit the clinic and make a deposit on Monday at noon. Please bring photo identification. Please do not consume alcohol for at least 12 hours prior and most importantly please refrain from ejaculation for 2 days before your visit.” Two days? What are we communist? That takes out my whole Saturday? WTF? Now I was seriously regretting this whole thing. Couldn’t we do this as an on-call thing? Like, “Hello. This is Matt Baker. It’s been two days since I have ejaculated and I would like to now. Can I come in?” Seems like you would have a lot more success that way. Who plans their life around “not cumming?” I had to talk myself into it. Ok, Matt. Settle down. You can make this work. If not for you and the $60 you will be rolling in, but for the good of your future and the kid you’ll never know. You can do this.

Monday rolled around and I was really nervous. I had never been to a job interview before and this one was to see if I would get paid to masturbate into a cup. My dream job. I did not want to screw this up. I laid out my finest clothes, I even wore my best hoodie. I only pull that out for the real nice stuff like Craiglist random encounter dates. I typed the directions into my GPS and was on my way. I always tell people, “Buy the expensive GPS”, because I did not and I am constantly being taken to the wrong stop. Usually I know right away that the Safeway is not the New Mexico performing arts Center, but it took me awhile to figure out that the sperm bank was not located where my GPS took me which was a Motel 6. For a second I actually thought, “Oh. They say ‘suite 257,’ but that must mean room 257.” Luckily I double checked the GPS on my phone and found out it was next door. Glad I did, can you imagine me going up and knocking on the door of room 257. “Hello. I am here to give you my sperm.” That might be a little weird, but then again I am not a romantic. spermbank

I finally arrived at the bank and was greeted by nobody. I literally stood at the welcome desk for 10 minutes debating on how to notify someone of my presence. Do I walk around and start looking in the open rooms? There was no ding bell, which is smart. Don’t want guys ringing it furiously, “Someone is waiting to cum here.” I decided on the clearing the throat technique and it worked. Out walked a ridiculously hot women who was also the secretary. Obviously this is by design right? You don’t hire the hottest person you have ever seen to greet people at a Chuck E. Cheese. You hire them to greet dudes who are about to whack it for money. Why would I expect anything else? This is the #1 sperm pimp in the Seattle area. They know what they are doing.

She gave me the rundown of the operation, how it was all going to take place like we were mapping out an elaborate strategy to rob Fort Knox. She handed me a cup and I said stupidly, “Oh man. I have to fill this whole thing?” She sighed and disappointingly said, “Umm. No. Just one donation is enough.” Then we stood there in silence for what felt like 3 years, before she said, “You can go now.” I scurried down the hallway to one of the rooms she directed me to and opened the door.

I was half expecting a glorious sex room with velvet curtains, vibrating beds and pictures of a shirtless 2pac, but instead I found a plastic Ikea chair, a sink and a plasma screen TV. Left a little something to be desired. I would think if you are coercing men to extract their future kin, you might do it with something that resembles more of a sex den instead of a room at a mental hospital. That’s just me though. I had the tough choice of trying to decide where to play the crotch Yahtzee. Do I sit in this chair, where surely a million bare asses have sat on? Or, on the ground, where who knows how many lost souls were waiting to greet my ass on their tiled grave. I laid some paper towels down to protect my butt which is probably the sanitary equivalent of cleaning dirt of your face with spit.

CalmI got naked and started to search through the menu of porn. I had never seen so much porn in my life. This was like the library of congress of porn. They had everything. Trannies, Interacial, Animals, they even had interracial tranny animals. No matter what I decided on, I just couldn’t seem to get in the mental mindset of an arousing experience. I thought about going and asking the nurse for help. Not in the sexual form, just in helping me set the environment of how I normally climax. All I would need her to do is pound on the door and yell, “It sounds like your not doing your homework.” I did not think that was an option, so I did my best to inject myself into a porno featuring two women and a man. I think in French it is pronounced, “Awesome.” It was working, almost too well. I had to pace myself. I did not want to give the girl at the desk the wrong idea. Finally, after 3-4 minutes (not bragging) I could feel it coming. That’s when I had to start thinking about how the hell I was getting it into the cup. I don’t know if you paid attention in 7th grade health class, but most erect penis’s I would venture to say go straight up, pointing towards the heavens. I don’t know if you have ever seen a jar either, but those require you to deposit things into it by pointing down. I am sure the Teattle Squirm Shank is aware of this. Why didn’t they give us a ketchup bottle designed for catching the liquid love. I was at a crossroads of epic proportions. I did the only thing I could think of doing, planking the chair and hope for the best. A lot like Eminem, this was my one shot (no pun intended). I am not sure if I missed, they would ever have me back. The mess it would leave let alone the knowledge that the persons goods you are trying to sell can’t even deposit something into a cup at point blank range. give

Finally the moment came and through my pure bliss, slight shaking and temporary blindness I was able to get it all into the cup. Part of me wished there was a call button that I could ring and someone would come in and hold me. However, there was not. I went to public school, so I did not know if my sexual mustard needed to be rushed to the lab like it was some sort of kidney that only survived on ice for 12 hours. I quickly dressed, dried my tears and walked out. I was half expecting a congratulatory celebration from all the people in the bank with balloons and saying funny things in a helium induced voice like, “Worlds best dad” and “You da man.” Maybe a cookie a biscuit, or to punch my punch card, but there was not a soul to be found. I walked around and found the box I was to deposit my goods into, which I thought was ironic, and went on my way. shirt

After you do something like this, it is a very awkward thing. I enjoy doing things that make people a little uncomfortable when they hear about it. I went for coffee and the woman asked, “So did you do anything fun today?” “Well, I am glad you asked” I responded. “Nothing big. Just finished donating some sperm.” It was weird to tell a total stranger that minutes before meeting them I had just ejaculated into a cup. I figured this might be the only chance I ever get, so why not marvel in it’s gloriousness. People seemed to be creeped out, but fascinated like I was a two headed calf that tap danced. I loved it. I had some fondness for my experience. After a few alcoholic drinks I got a little nostalgic and found myself debating on drunk dialing the Sperm Bank, just to see what they were up to. Luckily I invented this and it saved me from imminent rejection.

I checked my e-mail hourly awaiting a response. I imagined e-mail titles like, “Congratulations! Your sperm is the shit.” Or, “Increase your sperm size by 3 inches.” Or, “Matt Baker, you have the best coolest sperm in the world.” Nothing. Three days went by and I started questioning what was going on. Was this some elaborate identity theft operation? Go ahead. Steal my identity, probably would improve my credit. Finally, the e-mail came in entitled, “Your Sperm Bank Test Results.” I opened it like I was a virgin opening a condom for the first time and it read;

“Thank you for submitting a sperm sample for analysis. Your sample did not meet our strict quality criteria. The sample you provided is below normal sperm quality according to the WHO (World Health Organization) parameters for “Normal Sperm Quality”. The WHO parameters for normal sperm quality indicate that you must have greater than or equal to 20 million cells/ml. Your sperm sample had an average of 12.5 million cells/ml.”

I was stunned. I could see my future kids disappearing in $60 increments. First off, what is “Normal Sperm Quality.” Who wants their sperm to be normal? Of course mine aren’t normal. They are awesome. Second, 20 million cells/ml? That is strong enough to impregnate the microscope alone. Who wants a sample so densely packed with sperm it looks like a clown car? Mine are few and far between so that my sperm can roam. They should be more expensive like some sort of “Free Range Sperm.” Alas, they did not want me. I felt a variety of emotions.

donate-spermI felt rejected, like the girl I really liked rejected my offer to impregnate them. I had quickly become like the Alabama Cavefish seriously endangered. I had never felt so close to a sneezing panda in my life. Although, in the aftermath of this earth shattering news that my sperm would not make it to see themselves grow hands I dealt with the trauma by talking about it with strangers. Barista’s would ask, “Anything interesting going on with you?” Uh, yeah! “I just found out that my sperm count is really low.” The looks on their confused and disgusted faces was enough to help me get through it. All I know is that when life hands you lemons, you make strangers uncomfortable. I hope this can be an inspiration to people out there. In this case I was handed information that my goods don’t swim that well. I could let that hold me back, but I refuse. Maybe it’s just my personality, but folks I am not going to let it stop me. I am going to keep masturbating till the day I die. Take that Lame-attle Germ Bank.

Jamie Lee Curtis can’t improv

Often times I perform at events where my performance is scheduled right after a celebrity. I don’t know why I would ever following someone famous, but you would be surprised on how often it happens.  It usually goes like this, “Thanks for those moving words Mr. Obama. You are truly an inspiration to the world, and we are honored you came and shared with us today. Up next, let’s give a loud round of applause, to comedian and stunt man Matt Baker.” There is something mainheadfundamentally wrong with following somebody who is significantly more famous then me. I chalk it up to the old vaudeville days, when they would use an awful act to follow the headliner. The reason they did this is to clear out the theatre to get it ready for the next show. At any rate having a person no one has ever heard of, follow a guy who was the first black president of the United States, has got to be as dumb of a move as the time I ate a hot dog at a Chippendale show.

Being a performer you come across a lot of show producers who really have no idea what is going on. It might be the stress of managing such a large event (or the blow they are doing all through it,) but a lot of the times they just have no idea how to correctly put on a show. The worst comes out when there is a celebrity involved. I once got kicked out of my dressing room because David Hasslehoff had to take a dump in my toilet. When I was allowed back in my own dressing room, it smelled like a person holding on to a mediocre career. It sickens me to watch the show people be bent over by celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio in Basketball diaries. I understand if it is someone who actually makes a difference like the Dali Lama, but making sure Tom Arnold has 250 brown M&M’s and a glass of unicorn tears is going a little to far. They treat it like if they don’t, they can never get a low level D celebrity at their event again.

Following them is one thing I can manage, but sometimes the producer wants me to do some sort of funny interaction with the celebrity to keep the show moving. For some reason this happens a lot! Like Dan Marino’s 16 years of playing football is really going to pay off when he is forced to improvimprov for 5 minutes with a comedian. I can just see the idea going through the producer’s ecstasy riddled head, “Oh, you think Dan Marino is a great football player, just wait until he tries to make you laugh unrehearsed with this unknown comic.” It is stupid to ask someone who has done one thing their whole life and expect them to have success at something totally different. “Oh, your good at quantum mechanics, we are going to have you break-dance.” I mean, sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t. It is unfair to ask a comedian to stray from his act to make people laugh, but imagine someone who has never done any improv in there life doing it; it can go south in a hurry.

There is no more of a perfect example of people not being able to interact then the time I was asked to improv with Jaimie Lee Curtis. She was speaking at an event and I was scheduled to follow her. I Jamie Leethought it would be ok since she is an actress, and backstage she was really funny. So when I got on stage with her, I jokingly said, “Jamie, I don’t know who does your makeup, but they did a great job because I didn’t even notice your adams apple.” Jamie; instead of improving with me, just stormed off stage. Maybe it was what I said, but any person with improv training would have come back with a number of witty retorts like, “The same make up person that made your career invisible.” Or, “you sure noticed it last night when you were rubbing it.” Jamie instead decided to walk off stage and leave me hanging dry on stage. I thought it was funny and so did the crowd, but the show producer didn’t; and that is all that matters. Moral of the story is, if you are ever on stage with Jamie Lee Curtis, don’t bring up that she is a man.