Rick Wood

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Cleveland, Ohio. Somewhere downtown nestled among the giant old buildings that make up this part of the city. Just around the corner is The Federal Reserve Bank, where I assume white collar criminal workers push the pencils and papers that keep the greed machine grinding along.

11:45am

I’m currently parked on a highway somewhere between  Austin and Amarillo on the high plains of Texas. Traffic has stopped due to an overturned semi truck.

Today is this first day of what is intended to be a freewheelin’, road rambling adventure with myself D.B. Rouse and Blake Langlinais. Last night we left Austin, after a comedy show I was on, and drove into the night until stopping at a roadside picnic area to sleep in the van for a few hours.

We’ve been scouring the main streets of small town Texas in search of a diner or dive that we can play music in for tips and whatever food the kitchen is willing to let go of. So far town after town looks to be mostly abandoned, nothing is open and no one is out. It is a Sunday in the Bible belt however and when it comes to religious fanatics we’re no match for God.

Chapter 9 of the Book is now up and you can read it HERE.
Previous Chapters can be found HERE.

I’ve very nearly finished this novel I’ve been tinkering with for some time now and have decided to post it here on my website. I’ll be adding one chapter a week, I’ll make sure that the LINK is posted to this home page every Friday.

Remember after you vote, make sure to go out and spend some money.

Go out and spend it someplace where it will end up in the hands of the large corporate interests that, through lobbying and former board members being appointed to non elected positions in government, continue to slow and stop any real progress, that continue to sell out the American people for the sake of maximizing profits, that can spend whatever they want on influencing political campaigns because we keep giving them the money.

So go out and vote and then buy yourself something to eat that isn’t even actually food, and then pick yourself up something nice that used to be made here but then the factory was shipped somewhere else so they could “stay competitive.”
Go ahead you’ve earned it, it’s your right, it’s your freedom, you check a box every 2-4 years.

If you want to see change,
change the way you spend.
Stop feeding the machine.

Your dollar is the most important ballot you’ll ever cast.

Hey,
I had the extreme pleasure of being caught up in the recent hurricane/tropical storm thing that was Sandy in New York. Myself and a handful of other LA comics were out in NYC for a week when the storm struck. I took as much video as I could on my iPhone and edited it together. Some is from before the storm and some of it is from the night it hit near our hotel in Chelsea. There isn’t any graphic damage shots, we weren’t close enough to where it hit hardest.

I lived in Utah, in a town called Ogden, just North of Salt Lake for three years.
During that time I took it upon myself to learn a lot about the strange local cult, The Mormons or as they prefer to be called, Latter Day Saints. In addition to being the ominous presence looming over life in that state I was also absorbing the excitement of a young Mormon girlfriend who was sexual acting out during her freshman year of college.  As our time together wore on her guilt over our situation grew and she became increasingly persistent about getting me to convert. After looking into what that entailed our relationship quickly fizzled out. I became, as I do with most things, borderline obsessed with Mormonism and all the wacky shit they believe. I wanted to sneak into their temple and secretly film the bizarre ceremonies that ex-Mormons had described to me. I even entertained the idea of converting and posing as a model member of the church so I could get access to the endowment ceremony but the required year of  devotion to to the church was where my obsession met its limits.

Lucky for me someone else eventually video recorded the Mormon endowment ceremony and posted it to youtube where it is starting to go viral.

L.A. for the most part feels like ground hog’s day. Not the superstition, I mean the movie with Bill Murray. Day in, day out it’s the same thing over and over again. At least that’s how it feels most of the time. The weather doesn’t change, the people don’t change, career level hasn’t changed much, but mostly it’s the weather. The total lack of seasons causes something to happen to you after eight months here. That’s about how long it takes for your body to realize that something should have changed that didn’t.
To counteract that sometimes you have to institute change on your own and take stock of what things have been happening.

So here’s what’s new-
I’ve started a podcast titled “War On Idiocy” that you can download/subscribe to here on iTUNES or listen to here on this site.

I’ve started Co-Hosting “Death Of The Weekend” with Brock Wilbur at iO West on Hollywood Blvd.

Two shows I’ve been excited about doing lately and in the future are The Ho Ho Show and Vaudeville. Check them out.

So there’s the news. Check the DATES tab on the site and come out and see me sometime.

You may have noticed the recently trending Instagram hash tag – #rkoi
I wrote a blog on it that you can read here if you’d like.

The hash tag is just a collection of spoiled rich kids posting photos of their excesses and receipts for expensive dinners and bottle service. It’s masturbatory at best.

So a few days ago I searched for pictures of poverty stricken people and began to upload them to instagram under the #rkoi hashtag. Other Instagram users have begun to do the same, and so can you. I think this ridiculous meme can be overtaken and possibly ended, and maybe inspire some of these brats to do something worthwhile with their inheritance instead of ordering $42K of bottle service.