Sam's Sanity Diary

I'm livestreaming and podcasting again. I listened to some of my old solo podcasts and realise that it did start off as a decent quality (albeit poorly marketed) podcast, but at some point, I got so addicted to livestreaming that I just spent all my energy on livestreaming and even turned my podcast into a livestream and just dumped the audio there. Now that podcast is still on the shelf but I have revived my interview podcast (called Checking In On Funny People).  I'm quite happy with the first 3 episodes. I've not promoted it yet, so nobody knows it exists still, but I will this weekend. My idea from last week of mashing the two livestreams into one podcast has been put on hold because right now, the idea feels odd to me. Just from editing, I just don't see how I can be as interesting by myself as the guest is in the interview. If I was a listener, I'd just want to skip to the bit where the guest is dropping some truth bombs. I've often wondered about the futu...

I keep thinking I am overwhelmed and I want to do less, but the reality is that I am just afraid of being overwhelmed. I keep thinking I have something stressful to think about at work and therefore should not have anything else on my plate, but the thing is I can't really do anything other than worry about it and meanwhile, I'm actually not really doing anything productive and I just end up watching Youtube and playing Plants vs Zombies. But on a subconscious level, I feel like shit, because I feel like my life is just passing me by. Then on Sunday, I did a livestream with Jimmy Earll and I realised that is what I've been missing this whole time. I need this. If not for my career, then at least for my sanity. So the plan is to get back into it, but to try and do it better than I did before. Some mistakes I would like to correct this time around: 1. Paying too much attention to the viewers' chat and not focusing enough on the guest and content. I was pretty much relying...

So it's been 3 weeks since I said I would write every day and I only wrote once. I have no excuses. But I do want to say that although I still think that is a great idea, I forgot how much I hate keeping around a bunch of mediocre free flow writing. Ultimately, even if I do write every day, I will still likely come back and edit out most of it. Having said that, I am prone to bouts of laziness, so if you read anything crappy on this blog, just know that I meant to delete it. I can accept that people think I am not good, but I can't stand the thought of people thinking that I don't realise when I am bad. Anyway, here are a few things I wanted to write about. I threw out my back a month ago. I actually wanted to write about this but I just kept putting it off. I'm just old. I went rock climbing as usual with my son, and while warming up on what I thought would be a relatively easy climb, my back just started hurting and for a few days, I was in survival mode. Driving home...

This is my point of view and if I lose friends and alienate people, I'll live with it. Since the Crackhouse news broke, many of my friends have been asking me if I am worried about getting into trouble for what I say on stage. My short answer is - "Don't worry, I don't joke about those things." The longer answer is, I absolutely would write a joke about religion. I just haven't thought of one good enough to be worth the consequences in this country. Because I know that someone will get offended on the Internet, the whole thing will be taken out of context, some professional police report lodger will rile up an angry mob, the director of Mat Kilau will come and plug his movie, and I'll be spending the next few months explaining a joke. I just don't have a joke worth all that at the moment. I think people should be allowed to joke about any topic, just as I think people should be allowed to talk about any topic, BUT they have to be sensitive to the conte...

Changed the title of this blog again - this time to '100 Words A Day'. I realized I have been just doing nothing since things have gone back to some kind of normal and I feel like crap about it. I keep thinking of the times I used to feel positive and I think the most recent was near the beginning of this year, when I decided I wanted to put more effort into being a content creator. Right now, I'm not feeling any positivity at all. Everything just seems so big and overwhelming and I feel so small and helpless, and in the end, I just escape into Youtube videos and Netflix and computer games. These distractions are useful to get me through a rough patch, but I'm kind of stuck in the middle of the rough patch and I need a way to dig myself out. Right now, I feel like all I can handle are small tasks. There are too many things I would like to improve about my life, my self and my habits. Here are my goals: I want to sleep 7 hours each night. Lack of sleep has been making me...

The situation is FUBAR now. Some guy by the name of Yusuf Azmi, the leader of some Muslim consumer rights association decided he could gain some mileage from the Crackhouse situation and has been riling up the angry mob. They made a police report on Rizal's jokes and now Rizal is being investigated and he has no income from gigs or his club, and people have vandalised the club and have sent threatening messages to him and his wife, even mentioning the name of their two year old. And to be honest, most of the jokes they are offended by, aren't critical of any religion, but instead laughs at human folly. In one discussion, Mo Sidik showed us this clip of an Indonesian comedian saying Insha Allah, a very habitual saying among Muslims. He was not in trouble. There were no police reports. The video went viral. Indonesians understood that the joke was about how people fall into habits and don't always think the meaning of what they say. It's like that old joke or meme where a...

The way comedy open mics are run at Crackhouse Comedy Club is the same as most open mics all around the world. People sign up for a spot, they perform for a few minutes, they’re either funny or not funny, and then we move on to the next act. They don’t get paid. This is the way it has always been since the club’s inception 8 years ago, and since open mics started in Kuala Lumpur 13 years ago. Nobody is there to insult any groups or any religion. Everybody share laughs and they go home. There has never been a problem, until now. A few weeks ago, this lady performed at the open mic at Crackhouse Comedy Club for her first and last time. I can only give you a secondary account, as I was not there that night, but this is what I gather from watching the viral video everyone is talking about and also from friends who were there that night. She was wearing a hijab and a baju kurung. She said she had memorised 15 Juzuk Al Quran and then she removed the hijab and baju kurung to reveal what she w...