DC Black - Byword On The Street

Byword on the Street

Byword Smith is a young comic and writer located in Prince Georges County, MD. Truer than an innocent man in a lie detector test, he loves vocabulary and communication and is exhilarated by people who speak their mind. Whether or not he agrees is important, but secondary. His personal interests are loving his wife, and learning new things. Byword performs his comedy throughout the DC Metropolitan area, and houses his literary work at www.bywordsmith.com.

Just Ridiculous

Gas is ridiculously high these days. If it goes up 2 pennies more I’m going to have forget my car and ride my bicycle on the highway.

Motorist: “Get out of the way!”
Me: “You better go’head with that. This is the bicycle lane now.”

Gas is so high I don’t even order regular food at restaurants anymore. I order side items.

Me at a restaurant:“Let’s see…you all have the steak and shrimp combo…caribbean crab cakes…bamboo chicken…I’ll take some fries. $2.50? What if I gave you the potato and you cut it up for me. How much is that? $1.25? I’ll just take some water.”

Yes, gas prices are ridiculous but nothing could have been more ridiculous than the event that my wife and I recently went to that was held in the ‘hood. What we hoped would have been a nice family experience for my wife and I turned out to be nothing more than a certified gold grade-A buffoon convention. If the NAACP buried the N-word, this was Night of The Living Dead. With all the men (not boys, actual men) conforming to the “hip-hop thug” image du jour of dreadlocks under fitted caps and pants sagging so low you can see their ankle socks, we thought it best to drive through it, and then past it, right back home, to watch the Olympics.

The Olympics are fun to watch, even if it is in China. What’s a little denying of human rights in exchange for entertainment? There was a scene at the opening ceremony where a huge globe came out from the ground, and had people running sideways around the sides of the globe like they were in orbit. It was visually impressive but let’s be honest-there is no way you are gong to get someone to run sideways around a huge globe without denying them there human rights.

Chinese Overseer: “Byword! Run sideways around this huge globe!”

Me: “You are not getting me to run sideways around that huge globe. That’s not even gravitationally possible.”

Me (after getting pummeled by the overseer’s billyclub): “OKAY, OKAY *huffing and puffing as I jump on the side of the globe, defying gravity to run sideways* IS THIS FAST ENOUGH BOSS? PLEASE DON’T HIT ME AGAIN! MY NAME IS TOBY! MY NAME IS TOBY!”

China is cool and all but I’ll take the U.S.A. any day if I had to choose. Even with the ridiculousness that is embedded into this nation. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not sure how to end this edition of Byword On The Street, so I”ll just end it here. :-)

- Byword Smith

Mother's Days
City Slickers
I Don't Get It
Why Comedy?