Cledus' Kick-Fightin' School

We tried to enroll Callia into the same secret ninja school Batman went thru, but it wasn’t until after we’d carried a weird flower up a snowy mountain that we discovered that the place had burnt down? Dejected, we looked into ninja schools closer to Nashville. There wasn’t a great selection to choose from. We visited Cledus’ Kick-Fightin’ School, but were unimpressed. For one thing, they had no affiliation with any higher organization.. but most frightening was they didn’t seem to have any rules other than, “don’t be a sissy!” We decided to keep looking.

Eventually we found Spirit Marital Arts in Hermitage. They’re good people and seem to have their stuff together. This weekend, they’re doing a board break-a-thon to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It’s a good cause and the kids will have fun smashing stuff, so there really isn’t a downside to it.

If you want to donate a few dollars, it’s totally tax deductible.. here’s a way to do it via PayPal:

MY LITTLE GIRL BREAKS WOODEN BOARDS WITH HER HANDS!

UPDATE:

Thanks to everybody who has donated! Here’s what went down (kinda):

Here’s a thing we made during the snow a couple weeks ago starring Lacy, Guido, Ace, Laura, Callia and myself.. and introducing “Bertha The Snow Girl.”

Of course, the jackass is me. This is a video clip I previously put on the YouTubes but I just put it up on the FunnyOrDie the other day, so I thought I’d re-whore it.

It’s a mostly true story recorded May 18, 2009, at Zanies in Nashville, TN during Mary Mack’s cd release show. I did a rambly 35 minute set of stories that I (mostly) had never told on stage before & this was probably my favorite clip from that:

[funnyordie 0d5cd01b6d]

In the video I said it happened in February, but it was actually January 13th, as evidenced by my twit (twat?) on Twitter.

The end of that story is the big writer’s embellishment – I didn’t string it up in the back yard and field dress it while the neighbors watched in horror. I wish I had. I thought I could find a guy to come cut it up that night, but no-can-do. I ended up going back out on the road for a few weeks.. salivating every time I thought about it’s sweet, FREE, organic goodness. Next thing you know, it’s been a month or two and the thing is still frozen solid.

My Lovely Wifera & her friends wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. Any time I tried to tell them how to live their lives (and apparently I do that a lot), they’d say, “OH like I’m going to listen to you, YOU’VE GOT A DEER IN YOUR GARAGE.” Maddening. I had to put an end to the jibber-jabber. I was home for a while so I borrowed an electric saw from my dad & thought I’d go ahead and thaw Bambi out and see what I could do with him.

Turns out, a frozen buck is incredibly difficult to get out of a chest freezer – especially if you’re as weak and lazy as I am – plus it was too heavy for one person to lift as a fresh kill. My Lovely Wifera Laura was no help to me.. she absolutely refused to take part at all. I gets no support! No support, I tell ya! Even if I did have her help, there’s no way it would have come out of there.. I had to thaw it first.

I cut the power to the freezer the morning of May 30th and figured it would thaw over the course of the day & I’d cut it up that night. Guess what? It takes about five days for a frozen deer to thaw out. FIVE days. Five days of waiting and worrying. Five days of “I told you so”s. Five days of “hey Chad, I saw a squirrel on the side of the road yesterday.. want me to run by and see if it’s still there?” Five days of “WTF am I doing with my life? I’ve got a college degree, for shit’s sake.”

By June 4th, it was finally pliable. I tied a rope to its antlers, ran it thru a pulley hanging from the ceiling of our garage, and tied it to the bumper of My Lovely Wifera’s truck. I inched it forward and pulled the deer up out of the freezer and let it hang over a 55 gallon trash can. No, I’m not white trash at all.. I’m endearingly resourceful, despite my complete lack of funds, class and common sense.

I used a steak knife to slice it from its balls to its throat, hoping the guts would more or less neatly dump out. It looked easy in the YouTube video I watched.. but I guess rednecks are way better at this kinda thing than jackass comedians are. I had a few complications. The guts of MY deer were still solid ice. It was a pain in the ass to get ‘em.. but with frozen fingers, I was able to pull it all out. Unfortunately, the impact of the truck had broken the rib cage and ruptured the guts pretty badly.. so the surrounding meat wasn’t edible. Oh well, plenty of salvageable stuff left.

I used the saw to cut the forearms (or whatever you call deer legs – drumsticks?) off at the joints and started skinning it. The meat looked pretty good.. the thing just generally smelled game-y. If any deer happen to be reading this, you guys should think about showering every once in a while. Maybe if you took a dip in the creek you’d be able to score more does when you’re out strutting around the glen, waiting to dart out into traffic.

My brother Kirk assured me this entire process would take around 45 minutes, but I think he underestimated my gross incompetence. Somewhere around 3-ish a.m. I was getting sleepy, but visions of venison stew and jerky and burgers and steaks and sausage kept me going. As I pulled the hide off the nub of one of the elbows.. maggots shot out.

MAGGOTS!

“That’s it, I’m done.” I thought. I tried to make it work, but that was a quitting point if I’ve ever seen one. The hide had been ruptured at the elbow, the ribcage and on the head. I guess a fly found it’s way to lay some eggs in the elbow at some point? Realistically, I probably could have used 70% of the thing’s meat, but even I have limits. I started having doubts when I saw how the ribcage looked.. but when I saw mf’in maggots I was able to accept defeat and call it a wash. When it comes to cleaning out the fridge and eating questionable stuff, I’m a human garbage disposal.. but there’s no way I could have eaten any part of this thing without that image of little wiggly larvae shooting out of the elbow coming back to haunt me. I’m ready to vomit now, and it’s been months.

I lowered the deer into the trash can and loaded it up into the back of Laura’s truck. I washed up and hauled the corpse off to a wooded spot down the road where I could dump it. I came back home, and hosed off the trash can and felt like Dexter cleaning up the garage.. except my inner monologue wasn’t unnervingly adorable psychotic rationalization – it was my wife’s friends telling me how bison-shit crazy I am.

Lesson learned! Roadkill is ONLY acceptable if it’s fresh & you field dress it IMMEDIATELY. Just don’t leave it laying around too long. I’m sure you already knew that.. some of us watched Bear Grylls eat rotting Camel ass on Man vs. Wild and thought, “I could do that.” The rest of you have common sense. I’ll admit when I’m wrong, dammit. I guess I’m less of a Hunter.. more of a Gatherer.

Here’s my annual Holiday Times posting of the clip of me starring as Tiny Tim in George C. Scott’s “A Christmas Carol.” Enjoy:

The Chadyterians who follow my career closely already know this, but people keep sending me messages asking when I was going to talk about it all, so I thought I might as well talk about it here: I did appear on Last Comic Standing this season and it was glorious. Critics have already hailed my appearance as groundbreaking comedic genius spiced with dramatic tension unparalleled in the world of entertainment. I have to say.. please, everybody, calm down.

This is all very flattering, but I think it’s important that we all remember that I’m just a man. A very funny, sexy man.. but remember: I put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.. so the deification is really unnecessary and embarrassing. Let’s all try to keep things in perspective.

I forget.. many people outside of the Chadyterian faith come by occasionally to see what all the whoop dee doo (whoop-dee-doo!) is about, so maybe I should put the clip right here for the people who’ve had their heads under a rock and missed the non-stop media coverage about my recent NBC prime time debut. Enjoy.

YouTube: Chad Riden on Last Comic Standing

The emails I’ve been getting non-stop all week ARE right: the producers were very, very wise to just give audiences a small, potent glimpse of my comedic prowess and tangible, raw, sexual power. I think the great people behind Nashville’s Premier Authority On All Things Comedy, NashvilleStandUp.com (which, upon first glance seems like a wonderful website. I’ve bookmarked it, and will return there soon to stay abreast of the local scene that helped launch my career. I don’t blame you if you do the same.) said it best when they called the clip “the funniest second of video on YouTube.” Thank you, kind sirs.

While I appreciate all of this attention, I just want to point out that I’m really just a kid trying to have some fun.. and the real champions of the night were all of the Chad Riden Fans out there – you guys are the reason I do what I do.. and without you, it just wouldn’t be the same. I hope to see all of you out at all the live shows and public appearances. Thanks again for all of your support. May Megatheos bless us all, preferably via the rocket-like continued success of my comedy career.

It’s the moosssst nauseating tiiiime of the year. Well, almost.. Valentines Day is hard to beat. The December Holidays are second in the race for most depressing season only because there isn’t heart-shaped crap in your face everywhere you go. Instead, it’s the cliched Christmas garbage that has been crammed down our throats so many times that we’re fooled into thinking it’s tradition.

This continued complete bastardization of the true meaning of the season has permeated every aspect of our daily lives. Everywhere you go.. what do you see? It’s out there in the malls.. it’s all over radio, television and the internet. It’s even inked all over that pathetic, old-world, dead medium, print.

Will we ever be able to escape from it all and get back to the basics? Or have they permanently altered our concept of what the meaning of this season is? What values and customs will our children pass on to theirs? I wonder if the old ways I know and love will be forgotten. Will the ways of my ancestors eventually wither and die from lack of interest like the wonderful Police Academy franchise? I’d like to bring Christmas back to what I refer to as the “Police Academy 1 -- 4″ era.. the glory years.. the way it should be. As it stands, our holidays are stuck somewhere in the “Police Academy television series” era.. a total disgrace.

More than anything else, the one thing that really burns me is the way the religious zealots keep trying to sneak God, Jesus and The Bible into this once-sacred celebration. Always pushing their wacky ideas on everybody.. trying to make religion the focus instead of the one thing that we hold near and dear as holy: commercialism.

It just makes me sick to think that consumer spending is down so low this quarter. How can you call yourself an American if you’re not out there buying big ticket items like the Nintendo Wii? Don’t you care about the economy? Don’t you care about your kids? The only way to let your friends and family know that you love them is to buy them something impersonal and expensive. Roses and X-Boxes are good, but diamonds and SUV’s are better.

When will we all wake up and realize that self-reflection, worship and spending time with loved ones wastes precious time when we could be watching Coca-Cola polar bear commercials? While Satans little helper, Martha Stewart, pushes her wreaths and wassail, true traditionalists like myself know that nothing says “peace on earth” quite like over-extending your credit to buy the latest disposable-fad products at your local Wal-Mart.

Maybe I’m being too critical. It’s just that when I hear all this junk about the so-called “true meaning of the season” it really burns my brownies. I’m just thankful that when I get depressed about the way the world is heading, I can go into any Quickie-Stop-N-Shop and see Santa endorsing cartons of Lucky Strikes. That always cheers me up.

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kooky Kwanza, Funky Festivus, or whatever the hell it is you celebrate. I’ll help spread a little holiday cheer.. here’s a classic clip of my cameo appearance as Tiny Tim in George C. Scott’s “A Christmas Carol.” Clip courtesy of WBXX-TV.

httpv://www.youtube.com/v/YX075Zm_ahs&hl=en&fs=1