David Cross Update

LONDON AND THE BELUSH!
Hey everybody. Well, It’s been a long time since I’ve checked in with the gang at bobanddavid.com. I understand that it’s changed its look to something bolder and brighter with kind of a southwestern motif. Sounds good. I think that style is one of the best America has to offer. Few too people know about the history of southwestern style and it’s influence on early 90’s Hollywood. But that’s a tale for later, first let me regale you with some things that I have seen and smelled. The last couple of months have been jam-packed with cultural bridges being traversed and then set alight and stomped out with Doc Martins. And now I find myself back in sunny, eternally optimistic Los Angeles after a month in rainy, ever unhealthy London. Outside of Chechnya in winter, London has to be the place my stomach fears the most, but it was actually better than I thought. It was fun and educational (I took a guided tour of the Tower of London and now know what crack tastes like* although those two events are not linked) and I made many new friends there. I bought a cool jacket, and I ate a pie. Let’s see…what else? The prostitutes are a bit soggy and the money is heavier and the exchange rate sucks. Over all I would say don’t go to London unless you have twice as much money as you would spend for a similar vacation in say, Providence Rhode Island, but also, don’t go on vacation in Providence Rhode Island, that would be foolish. People in London are a bit friendlier and the girls are much more attractive then I remember them from the last time I was there about five years ago. Apparently they are starting to evolve into a race of people who find fat, pale, blotchy, unwashed bodies and terrible teeth less attractive then the alternative. I don’t know if it’s because they now get “Baywatch” over there on BBC1 or whether someone woke up sober one day, but it’s definitely taken a turn for the better if you like attractive women. Unfortunately for the ladies, I can’t say the same about the fellas. They still have bad teeth; vomit flecked shoes, greasy hair and the delicate, sensitive touch of a clunky robot built in the 50’s. The food’s a lot better though. Whereas before it seemed that every other meal was coated in three-year-old oil with invisible time-released feathers in it, now there’s way more variety and healthy alternatives. I was there to do stand-up shows, which, for the most part were pretty well received. I had a couple of off nights and one terrible show. I was also called a “homophobe” amongst other nasty slanders in a local paper (“The London Slanderer”). The entire run was sold-out and people genuinely seemed to like my shit (although starting off my set one night with “Wow, your country is almost as fat and stupid as mine” wasn’t the best idea). But I did follow it up with a description of Georgia and the Minneapolis Airport (two huge fat zoos – that is what I consider the Minneapolis Airport – a fat zoo) so they let it go. I did experience one thing that was unexpected; I actually lost weight after a month in London. I think, because I’m a little more health conscience then I used to be, and, after I would have an English fry-up for breakfast, fish and chips for dinner and six or seven pints and a couple of shots of whatever after the show waking up not too far from a pile of vomit and bent glasses (try that six nights a week for three and half weeks straight), I would work extra hard to take it easy the next couple of days and eat right and not drink too much. So perhaps there is a lesson to be taken from binge drinking (a big problem in Britain right now) and that is, if you have to go to work or hold a baby at some point during your day and you feel bloated and sick and you need to set yourself right, binge it up! You’ll regress to such a repulsive state that you’ll have no choice but to clean up or die. And who knows, maybe you’ll even drop a few pounds!Holy Crapoli!Start the Presses! The Cigar Corner Presses that is! As I have recently learned, I attended the 56th annual Emmy Awards this year in Hollywood! Normally this would not be a big deal as my security service (Black and Strong Ex-Con Security by David) is usually involved, but this turned out to be one of the most special of special nights that humans have ever constructed! If you think watching Alison Janey awkwardly humiliating a fellow nominee is noteworthy, then you better get to Office Depot and get a bunch of notebooks, because have I got something for you to write down in a notebook! I, David Cross, finally for real, got to meet, greet, and deplete the one and only – the legend – Jim Belushi! The Belush! JimJam was there to celebrate the release of season one of “According to Jim” into the wild. And for those of you still in the Jim Belushi closet, that’s Jim’s show on ABC! It’s based on his life and the hilarious and imaginative way he chooses to live it. I’ve known J-bone ever since we met on the set of “Destiny Turns on the Radio”, or, as I like to call it, “Jim Belushi Turns on the Movie Going Public”. He was electrifying as “The Douche bag”. At least I think that’s what his character was called. I didn’t have any scenes with him but that’s what everyone was calling him on the set. Although some of the crew referred to him as a “Total Prick” so maybe he was playing multiple rolls. Anyway, I had always been a huge fan of his and I was excited to work with a master. I guess his character in the movie was a real asshole and in the true spirit of a professional, Jim would remain in character even when he wasn’t shooting! He would always keep himself loose on the set by coming up with some fun “in character” shenanigans like making the wardrobe girl cry and then ultimately quit. He was awesome. I was hoping he would get together with his rockin’ blues band “The Sacred Hearts” and blow out an old Mississippi Delta Blues jam but he hadn’t come up with the idea to follow in his dead brothers footsteps once again, and form them yet. But keep in mind that this was before 9/11, and that changed everything. Jim formed “The Sacred Hearts” in honor of those that perished in the Towers that terrible day, and he always dedicates his cover of The Blues Brothers (2000) cover of Blind Nigger Nelson’s classic, “Ain’t nobody done no nothin’ no way no how I cain’t do myself if I had eyes and wasn’t a poor black man in a brutally repressive society” to the firemen of ladder 23, a jam the Belushmobile was born to jam!So, flash-forward several years to the present. I’m sitting in the audience at the Emmy’s when I hear the twelve greatest words a Belushiac like myself could ever hear: “Ladies and Gentleman, from ABC’s own According To Jim, here’s Jim Belushi! Well, I nearly fell about the place. I screamed “The Belush!” as loud as I could twice, but I don’t think Jim or America heard me. As I looked on as Jim introduced the presenters of the next award I marveled at how much talent he exuded from the stage. It was as if God had a master plan to kill John Belushi just so that Jim could get a shot at getting his chance at Hollywood. And I was thinking how lucky ABC is to have According to Jim on its network, because Jim would never consider being on something so beneath him as an awards show. Especially one that will never recognize him for any achievement ever in life or death. There’s a good reason you’ve never seen The Belush picking up an award at anything, and that is because he is pure. He’s not about glitz and glamour. He’s a regular guy like you and me and the President. So, there I was, sitting amongst Hollywood royalty like Sela Ward and Brad Garrett and all I wanted to do was get out of my monkey suit (literally, it was made from monkey fur) and get backstage and hang with Jim and just shoot the shit about regular guy stuff like “Da Bears”! And what he uses to get his many stains out and what he thinks of the situation in the Sudan. After the “Best Shouty Actor in a Police or Law or Hospital Drama Series” (won by the guy from “CSI – Law Hospital”) there was a commercial break. I quickly farted, got up, and went down the aisle to the side of the stage. When the security guard (a newly clean Pauly Shore) looked away I snuck in through the curtain and made my way down to the backstage area…


*Goobleberries!