I was a comedian.  Really.  Never mind that everybody always expects you to be funny.  They even expect you to be funny when they know you shouldn’t be, and then they’re mad at you for doing something you had no intention of doing anyway.  Like at a funeral.  It’s like they’re waiting for the funeral jokes, and the longer it goes before you tell one, the madder they get.  So you just go ahead and tell one anyway, just to get it over with.  Hey!  You hear about the waiting line at the cemetery?  They’re just dying to get it.  No, I’m dead serious.  You ever get into a fist fight at a funeral?  So, the real thing is... I finally made it big.  Really.  I was doing the club circuit.  Southwest Missouri.  Southeast Kansas.  Northwest Oklahoma.  Now there’s where the steady business is.  They got a bunch of reservations right on the Oklahoma / Missouri boarder.  They got casinos.  Really.  So, I had this real sweet gig.  I did three shows on Friday, Saturday, and picked up a matinee on Sunday.  I was on a four week rotation.  What, with the other casinos, I really didn’t need to pick up anything else.  My agent managed to get me some face time with a cable rep.  Got her into my show.  She liked it.  Next thing you know, I’m doing this Comic Competition thing.  Remember that?  So I didn’t win it, but I was able to sell this whole story line with the network.  I had these characters that were all part of my act.  They made a sitcom.  It was about this accountant who’s trying to get laid.  Yeah, that was about it.  But it had some really good jokes.  “What’s the good in dividends without dividends.”  That was one of mine.  It was funnier in context.  There’s actually more accounting jokes than you’d think.  Really.  But the more successful the show got, the less time I had to write.  But they had writers.  They hired these guys... there was like four of them – three guys and a chick – and they basically became me.  And they started writing most of the episodes.  And the thing is... they were better than me.  They had better timing.  They had better jokes.  They just had better stuff.  They were funnier than me.  So I just stopped writing altogether.  We were cancelled halfway through the 2^nd season.  So I thought I’d give my accounting degree a shot.  Yeah.  No kidding.  I really have a degree in accounting.  I had to major in something.  So I guess I’m an accountant.  Every once in a while I think of some stuff that’s pretty funny.  But by the time I go to write it down, I just think, Ah... what’s the point?  Thanks for listening.  I know you didn’t have to.  You know, we don’t thank our audiences enough.  And that’s a shame.