Power Quote
This is either “Power Quote: Louis CK,” or “Louis CK on Writing”
“I just wanted to buy a trumpet to learn how to play trumpet. I went in to Sam Ash, or one of those places, and there were all these student trumpets for, like $100. The guy started showing me, you know, here’s like a nickel-plated, beautiful trumpet and it’s got a flawed bell because it was hurt, but they had repaired it. And it was $1400. I didn’t have any of that kind of money. But I went to an ATM and I took out everything I had in the bank, and I bought this fucking $1400 trumpet without having any ability. I’d never even blown into a trumpet before. And then I was walking through Times Square with this fucking thing in my hand, and just freaking out and feeling bad. And I went and ducked into one of those peep shows. Next thing I know I’m in a peep show booth, one of those upright coffins, looking at a chick—a tired Latvian girl, probably—through the window of this peep show and jacking off. And it’s a two-foot by two-foot room. So I jerk off and I came on the trumpet case, which was standing between my legs. And once I came, and I looked at the come on this beautiful, brass-buckled trumpet case, I realized that if I had come to this peep show first, I could’ve saved $1400.”
The very, very funny Louis CK explains the boundaries of ambition. From the October 4, 2010 episode of WTF with Marc Maron.
Begs the questionRaises the question: better that he bought it or better to have headed to the peep show first?
Me? Gotta go trumpet.
UPDATE: Schooled. Thanks for the links.
Ahem. See above.
i’m a big fan of louis c.k. here’s a set he did at cinema classics in ny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv8d_ry-u-Q
For a blog about writing, you should really try to use “beg the question” appropriately.
And thus the euphemism “going trumpet shopping” enters the world.
You do not know what “begs the question” means. As a writing blog, you should. Here: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/begs-the-question.aspx
Never come up before. I will remember this from now on.
Ahem. See above.
grammar-schooled public style. the hammer hast wrought justice upon mine eyes.
I’m not going to link to this tweet. Nope.
Raises the question : If he spent all his money on the trumpet, how could he afford the peep show?
i don’t get it.
i don’t get it.
both? both.
Explaining the joke will, I think, kill it for me.
How I felt this related to writing: sometimes I’m overcome with a weird, powerful sense of ambition, and I want to buy an a camera that still uses film, or I want to start a publishing concern all on my own, or I want to learn how to be a one-man black metal band, or I want to mix a bunch of things together in the studio at a pirate radio station. Louis is suggesting that the simple act of masturbating (in or out of a peep show) eliminates this sort of wild, weird impulse. In his case, it would’ve saved him $1400 that he didn’t have.
Me, I’m thinking that—even though those crazy, weird impulses are probably just born out of anxiety (“I need something to calm me down but I’m not sure what it is, so the very first thing that occurs to me is probably going to have to do”)—there can often be some really interesting results.
when incorrect usage is more common than correct usage, how long does it stay wrong? This begs the question.
how long
For as long as fossils are left in the earth to test one’s faith.
The joke or the point it makes about the roots of creative ambition?
[…] and since this post is kind of becoming a link dump, here’s a hilarious power quote from Louis C.K., from […]