Ben Gran

If you’re coming to Ben Gran’s stand-up comedy show on March 9, you’re probably wondering, “What’s Ben going to talk about? What could he possibly have to say that is funny? Why should we trust him to make us laugh?”

Here are a just a few examples of the topics, witty anecdotes, jokes and “bits,” as comedians say, that Ben will be selecting from his comedy repertoire:

1. Differences between men and women. For example, men love sports, and women hate sports! And women always want to get married, but men are afraid of commitment!
2. Hitler.
3. Tom Cruise.
4. This one time when Ben ordered Thai food, and asked for “No Spice,” but the woman at the restaurant thought he said “No Rice.” Hilarious cross-cultural misunderstandings ensued!
5. Hollywood film producers, and how they aren’t terribly bright.
6. Politicians, and how they aren’t terribly bright.
7. Things that make him feel happy and content. Because there’s nothing funnier than things in your life that don’t present any difficulty or frustration.
8. Parenthood. And all the ways it ruins people’s lives.
9. Definitely not sex. Because sex is a sacred act between two lawfully wedded people and there is nothing funny about it.
10. Not religion, either. Because Ben is a devoutly religious person who is currently applying to seminary school, and he would never joke about something so important as God.
11. Vital issues of the day.
12. Death.
13. Work. And how it makes us long for #12.
14. Headlines from Cosmopolitan magazine.
15. A series of anecdotes that illustrate how Ben Gran is completely in control of all facets of his life, wealthy, powerful and revered by all.

BUY TICKETS ($10) for Ben Gran’s stand-up comedy show.

Where do comedians get their ideas for jokes? How does the “magic” happen, where a comedian transforms ordinary words into pulverizing lightning bolts of unwholesome comic goodness?

Mormon Temple Garments

If you’re coming to Ben Gran’s stand-up comedy show on March 9, perhaps you’ve wondered about these questions. Well here are the answers. Here are the secrets of the time-trusted process that Ben Gran uses to write jokes:

1. Start each day by looking for new ways to feel bad about yourself.
2. Hire offshore joke-writing teams in India, Pakistan and the Philippines to write jokes for $2 an hour. (Some of the jokes don’t translate well across cultures, but hey, you get what you pay for.)
3. You know your brother-in-law who’s really funny and is always making wisecracks at Thanksgiving? Sign a contract with him and copyright some of his best material.
4. Try to grow a beard, and fail miserably.
5. Put on your joke-writing “Thinking Cap.” (And by “Thinking Cap,” of course, we mean: “Mormon Temple Garments.”)
6. Relentlessly edit. (Out of every 10 draft jokes, only 1 makes the final cut to be added to Ben Gran’s Facebook and Twitter feeds.)
7. Think about humorous situations encountered in everyday life, and then write them down.
8. Think about times in your life when people betrayed you, belittled you or made you feel bad somehow, and then ask yourself, “What could I say that would, on a profound level, really hurt and devastate these people?”
9. Attend daily Confession with a Catholic priest to be exposed to unintentional comedy.
10. Cultivate a vague sense of disappointment and self-criticism.
11. Deprive yourself of a healthy amount of sleep, social activity and exercise.
12. Watch countless hours of television to get inspired by the Hollywood Dream Factory.
13. Avoid books like the plague.
14. Infect yourself with The Plague, since, in the words of legendary comedian Red Skelton, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” (And presumably funnier.)
15. Drink more alcohol.

Are you laughing yet? Come laugh at Ben Gran LIVE on March 9 at the Des Moines Social Club.

Buy Tickets Now!

(No pressure.)

Scene from "The Road" (2009) starring Viggo Mortensen

As a freelance writer, I often feel like my skills are kind of, well, silly.

I get paid to write stuff. I think of things, I write them down and post them on the Internet, and people send me money for this.

Isn’t this kind of a ridiculous way to earn a living? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and I’m grateful to be able to make a living at it, but I often feel inferior compared to people who really know how to “do” stuff, fix stuff, build stuff, grow stuff.

For example, my brother and his wife run Table Top Farm, an organic vegetable farm in rural Nevada, Iowa. Now that is REAL work. Farming is INTENSE. Farming is HARD. They make things GROW out of the GROUND. They raise food to feed hungry people. I can barely buy groceries.

Our friend Jessica Fisher runs a “handy woman” business where she helps people fix things around the house. She helped us install a new door and we’re going to hire her again to replace our bathroom fan and perhaps our kitchen faucet. I couldn’t handle doing any of these things.

Whenever I have to try to fix something around the house, it’s always a disaster. I always have to make 3 or 4 trips to the hardware store, I drop heavy things on my feet and/or hit my thumb with a hammer and/or break something. The work always takes 5 hours longer than I had estimated and I don’t enjoy a minute of it. I’m helpless. Instead of trying to fix things in my house, I might as well just curl up in a ball and cry.

So someday when civilization inevitably collapses into a hellish, dystopian part-Mad Max/part-Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” future, I will be at the mercy of others.

I hope the people who have actual useful skills to survive in our post-Apocalyptic hellscape will give me food in exchange for telling humorous stories around the campfire.

Several years ago, before we had kids, my wife and I made a terrible mistake and decided to adopt a dog.

It was a Labrador retriever, big and yellow, over 100 pounds. We adopted the dog sight-unseen from some friends of friends who were looking to find him a new home. His name was “Bo.” We drove 2 hours to Southwest Iowa to meet Bo’s soon-to-be-former owners, picked up Bo and drove him back to our house.

We don't have any pictures of Bo. This is not the actual dog.

I really don’t know what we were thinking. This was back in the days before we had kids and we had no other responsibilities or worries in life. We thought we wanted a Lab. They were the most popular breed in America – known for intelligence, loyalty and athleticism. We had visions of jogging with our dog, walking with our dog, playing fetch off a dock while the dog happily plunged into the frigid lake, again and again.

Unfortunately, we quickly realized that Bo was going to present a bit of a change to our otherwise orderly, happy lifestyle, starting on the first night at our house when he compulsively chewed through all of his toys.

“That’s strange,” I said as Bo chowed down on another stuffed animal. “He sure seems to like chewing!” Little did we realize, until it was too late, that Bo was expressing stress and anxiety by gnawing everything he could get his paws around. Pillows, ropes, frisbees, and stuffed animals all got shredded into an indistinguishable mass.

Bo was a very anxious dog. He was constantly chewing and licking and smacking. I don’t blame him, really. After all, the only owners he’d ever known had just given him away to a couple of strangers. This is one of the things that annoys me about dogs – their neuroses.

Seriously, what’s the point of having a neurotic dog? I thought dogs were supposed to provide emotional comfort to their owners? I thought dogs were supposed to help you feel more peaceful and centered, since they have no awareness of mortality and all that. But most dogs I’ve known have just introduced me to new levels of anxiety.

Bo needed a lot of attention. He needed daily walks. He needed lots of things that we couldn’t give him because we were too busy and self-absorbed. We worked long hours and left him in the house alone all day. We’d let him out to go pee and poop in our tiny urban backyard, but then he’d chase squirrels across the street and get lost and run onto the neighbors’ front porches. We were constantly chasing him around the neighborhood and cursing the fact that our small lot didn’t have a fully-fenced backyard.

We would have given him more attention, but our personalities just weren’t the right fit. He was a friendly dog, but he was overbearing and off-putting, like a guy at a party that you can’t wait to stop talking with. Even though his constantly wagging tail was as powerful and painful as a baseball bat, he was kind of a wuss, really. Whenever we gave a command to “come inside” or “stop destroying the neighbor kid’s toys,” he would slump his shoulders and skulk around and defy us, quietly, in a passive aggressive fashion.

I was so disappointed. I figure, as long as you’re going to have a dog that’s destructive, messy and painful, he might as well be a stronger personality, more of an Alpha Dog, you know? Take my parents’ dog, Milo, for example. He’s a total jerk, but we love him for it. He’s the dog you love to hate.

And he shed EVERYWHERE. All of our clothes, furniture and rugs were soon coated with dog hair. Dog hair blew threw our house like tumbleweeds. We were idiots. We never should have gotten a dog that shed so much. My wife quickly noticed that she was sniffling, sneezing and having sore throats all the time, and we realized that she was allergic to the dog.

Bo was too neurotic to eat dinner in the basement, so we had to move his (HUGE) food and water dish up to our tiny 1920s-era kitchen, where it took up precious floor space. He was too neurotic to eat by himself, so we had to be near him while he ate, or else he wouldn’t eat at all and would later vomit all over the floor. He vomited all over our living room rug and ruined it. We ended up donating it to the animal shelter.

As you might imagine, a 100 pound dog creates a lot of poop. Our yard was soon covered with little piles, scattered about like monuments. I scooped poop as often as the winter weather would permit, but I still couldn’t keep up with the supply. We couldn’t walk him as often as he needed because we were too lazy and couldn’t wake up early enough to walk him before we left for work. (Again – we were idiots. I don’t know what we were thinking. We never should have gotten this dog. Or any dog.)

And whenever we did take him for a walk, it was no fun because he was constantly straining on the leash, wouldn’t listen to instructions, and wouldn’t do what we needed him to do. (My mom has to have rotator cuff surgery because her dog Milo pulled her to the ground during a walk. That’s right – she has a “dog-related injury.” Why do people put themselves through all this dog crap? How desperate are we for companionship?)

It all would have been worth it if we really loved this dog and wanted him in our lives. But the truth was, we just weren’t that into Bo. Eventually we realized that the personal chemistry wasn’t there. So 4 months after we brought Bo home, we decided to take him to the pound and had him euthanized.

No, just kidding – ha ha! We were lousy dog owners, but we’re not monsters.

No seriously – I know that dogs getting put to sleep due to lack of shelter space is a big tragedy, and I don’t mean to make light of it. I was just trying to see if you were still paying attention.

We didn’t have him euthanized. Seriously, I swear. Instead, we found him a new home. With a family in the country that had a pond in the backyard. The father of the family loved to go fishing and hunting, and wanted a dog to go fishing and hunting with. They had 2 young kids who wanted a pet. The whole thing worked out perfectly in the end. Bo happily climbed into the car with his new owner and rode out of our lives, and we were all better off as a result.

My four months of abortive dog ownership taught me several valuable lessons:

1. I’m not very patient.
2. I’m too self-absorbed.
3. I’m not really that interested in or fascinated by dogs. They’re not people, they’re not children, and they don’t deserve the lofty status that American culture has assigned to them. In some ways I’d feel more at home in Muslim countries where dogs are seen as filthy rat-like creatures. I know people love their dogs, and I sometimes enjoy visiting other people’s dogs, and I don’t wish any harm to come to dogs, and I hate cruelty to animals just like any other form of cruelty, but the bottom line is, I don’t love dogs and I don’t want to own a dog ever again.

Unfortunately, now we have kids, and both of our kids love dogs. So it’s probably just a matter of time before we have to get one. It won’t be another Lab, or any other dog that sheds. It would have to be something hypoallergenic, housebroken and easy to live with, that requires no outdoor exercise and minimal involvement on my part.

Ideally, my next dog will be a really smart, hairless cat.