Let me tell you the FUNNIEST THING!!!! HA heh, heh, ha...um...oh.

Tonight there’s a good band playing at Reggies Rock Club in the bar at 630. They’re kind of unannounced and they’re opening a hippy show, but you should go check em out. I’m going to check em out. Red Scare honcho Tobias Jeg will be there. It’s kind of a big awesome deal, but I can’t really offer any details here. Let’s just say that if you like bearded rabble playing good songs, this isn’t to be missed. Plus, it’s early. You can still get to your various dinner plans and shit, or you can stay and laugh at hippies. It’s really up to you. Don’t say I never let you in on anything awesome, kay?
Kay.
On to business. You know what’s one of the worst types of people in this world? Those who confuse being ‘talkative’ with being ‘interesting.’ There are lots of different ways an individual can do this and it’s also a nebulous thing; as in: someone can be very interesting in one situation and a total loudmouth dipshit in another. It’s an epidemic, really. Hell, I’m doing it now! Don’t believe me? Read on.

Probably the most common version of this horrendous trope is the boorish woman who’s out at the bar and not as interesting or good looking (which basically means interesting, doesn’t it?) as her friend and just won’t shut the fuck up about whatever the fuck she’s babbling on about incessantly. She’s more than just a cockblocker. She’s a conversation hijacker and she’s always talking about her dumb “awesome” job or her cool friends who (spoiler alert) can’t possibly be cool if they’re her friends and can’t possibly actually be her friends if they’re really as cool as she says.

Close on her heels in terms of being ‘the worst’ are the loud guy who was maybe the wackiest, most off the wall guy in his tiny rural town but who has yet to be introduced to people who don’t remember (or otherwise give a fuck about) the totally subversive way he repainted that billboard to be about giraffes, or made the high school production of “Our Town” into a scathing indictment of the school board (especially that tyrant Mr. Greenwood!) by using rogue audiovisual material or whatever. These two deesh top my list, as far as high levels of social irritation go, but there are more. Oh, there are plenty more.

But today, our focus will be the desperate-to-add-something guy or girl who should probably just shut up and listen to the things going on around them, but who instead hijacks the whole conversation, making it uninteresting and kind of torturous and generally forces everyone else to abandon said conversation and disband early.

This person is one of the worst because they often interrupt with irrelevant details or long winded, only tangentially related stories and completely make the natural flow of the once interesting conversation herk and jerk and they make people who probably don’t just usually sit there waiting for someone to finish talking (because this is the sign of a bad conversationalist. It’s the sign of a bad interviewer too…Conversation is built around give and take, and if some detail sets you off and you’re just waiting for this person to shut up so you can launch into the story about the time you purposely shit your pants out in Nantucket that one time, you’re a dildosaurus and chances are, the other people you’re talking to are noticing what a bad-at-conversation-person you are. This is ALWAYS true, with the only exception being if you’re talking to someone who’s absolutely hanging on your every word, which is rare unless you’re like, say, Dave Chappelle or Howard Stern or Glen Beck or something) to just sit there and wait for you to finish talking. That sucks, and here’s why it sucks the most:

This is a very, very negative character trait that is interesting because it’s A) usually brought about by enthusiasm, which should in most cases be nourished and rewarded, but in this case should be stifled and redirected as listening, but rarely is, and B) something that we’ve ALL done. I know that I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat there listening to people that I thought were fascinating/cool/smart/funny/whatever and just longed to be part of the conversation so badly that I desperately just launched myself in with all the grace of a freshly stabbed Mexican cowboy flying through a tavern’s front window. It’s a sucky feeling, and it’s just as sucky to watch someone else do it, and it’s REALLY sucky if it’s your buddy and you’re standing there and you want to say something like “Hey, dude…you gotta shut up.” But you can’t, because they’re so excited and they’re just trying their best.

But they’re also irritating the shit out of everyone. That’s what I hate. I hate it with empathy and rage in equal portions. That’s all.

I’m in a diner and it smells like dog shampoo in here. It’s gross. I gotta go.

See you tonight at Reggies.
xoxoxoxoxo