Tag Archives | the moth

Parrots aren’t as cool as they seem.

By on December 9, 2015 in Matt Baker, Story

In theory, parrots rock! When I think of parrots as pets, I imagine them less as a pet and more like a poorly educated drunk buddy. The similarities are uncanny. They both kind of just hang around, piece together funny sentences and constantly eat all your food. For me, I dream about all the cool tricks I could teach them. If I had a parrot, I would teach it amazing card tricks and cool phrases like, “Oh baby, come and pet me” or “liquor before beer never fear.” Parrots can learn all sorts of parrot cool things. I had a friend who taught his bird to play dead when he shot it with an imaginary gun. I saw a guy street performing in San Francisco, who taught his parrot to take $5 bills from people’s hands. Although, when someone would hold a $1 bill out, he would take it and say: “Cheapo, Cheapo.” I even heard a story about a couple, whose parrot would always say, “Oh John, give it to me baby. That’s how I like it.” Finally, the husband figured out “John” was the name of the man his wife was cheating on him with, and the Parrot was just repeating what he heard.

My roommate’s ex-girlfriend has a parrot named Ralphie; that she would bring over to the house. Ralphie was probably the meanest parrot I have ever met. If Oscar the Grouch were a parrot: Ralphie would kill him. At first he was cool, because he was shy about being in a new environment. However, once he felt comfortable in the house, and around us, his true feathers came out. Here is three reasons why someone needs to have a serious talk with this bird.
Shipwreck_RAH#1- He wasn’t one of those parrots that you could just let chill on your shoulder and make you feel like a Pirate or Shipwreck from GI-Joe, Ralphie was a Punk. The reason being, whoever’s shoulder he was on, he would constantly shit all over. If he wasn’t treating them like a star of a German Fetish Film, he usually was trying to maliciously bite their ear off like he’s some sort of well spoken Mike Tyson. I guess Parrots can shit where they eat.

#2 – Any time you are quite, he is quite. Anytime you are trying to have a conversation in his paltrowcry_1824185cpresence, he starts crying like he’s Gwyneth Paltrow listening to Coldplay. It’s a type of cry that makes having a baby on a plane sound like ocean waves.

#3- His wings were clipped, but that did not stop him from flying around the house 10 feet at a time. He looked like a Wright Brothers experiment gone wrong. Often times he would fly right at your face, like he was purposely trying to freak you out. I would be in the kitchen minding my own business, and all of a sudden here comes a bird suicide bombing my face.

His owner, my roommates ex-girlfriend; was so overly protective of him. That made the whole situation worse. She was more concerned about his well being then the well being of the people who lived in the house. I once said to her: “Hey, if I accidentally hit him, while he is flying at my face, with a baseball bat, it’s not my fault.” She flipped out like every person ever on the show Hardcore Pawn.  I mean, I know parrots have gained national attention with their Hollywood Pauliebreakthrough movies. Movies like Paulie, and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, but that is no reason for Ralphie to be such a ego driven douche. I think it is safe to say, I was not fond of the bird, but that was all about to change.

One night, I came home to my house; which we had only lived in a month, and there was no one home. It was probably midnight, all the lights were off, and I headed up the stairs to my room. As I am walking up the stairs I hear this faint voice that says, “Hello?” The voice was so eerie, and unexpected, it made me jump like I was Dominique Wilkins getting punked. Not only did I jump, but I also let out a little girl shriek that would have made Hitchcock wet himself. I ran out of the house; like my girlfriend’s husband just came home, and stood in the street trying to gather myself, and process what I just heard. After gathering myself, I slowly walked in the door, and heard something upstairs moving around. I walked slowly up the stairs with my only protection being a pen, out of my pocket; because everyone knows, the pen is mightier than the sword. While I was headed upstairs, I thought I was going to see something out of Paranormal Activity, but instead I saw Ralphie: sitting in his cage, at the top of the stairs, laughing hysterically at the spot in the front of my pants. The site of the little green bird, made me burst into laughter, marveling at my own ridiculousness.

Ever since that night, I began to like Ralphie. I made an effort to turn a blind eye to his annoying habits, and selfish activities. I began to like him for who he was: a shitting, ear eating, pompous parrot who has a great sense of humor. So, three cheers for Ralphie; (as long as he doesn’t come over again.)

Jamie Lee Curtis can’t improv

By on December 10, 2013 in Matt Baker, Story

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.