Here a nit, there a nit,
everywhere a nit to pick
The date: Friday, July 23. The time: 2 a.m. I was by myself, channel surfing like I do every evening, looking for an excuse to remain awake. Anything to deny that another day had ended. No, I’m not ducking my mortality. It’s those dreams, those damn dreams. Every morning I wake up thinking I’ve just come back from a David Lynch film fesitval. Hey, don’t talk to me about cause and effect ...

So where was I? Oh, yeah. My name is Major. I’m a retired old fart in Bluffton, SC. And I’m a night owl. (Insert the “Dragnet” theme. Dum-de-dum-dum!)

That’s when I found it. Something called “Charmageddon,” a Showtime comedy special. The comic was Hal Sparks. I’d never heard of him. Sure, I would have ... if I had watched “Queer As Folk” a few years ago. It was on Showtime for five seasons. Sparks was one of the stars. He played a character called Michael Novotny. Turns out he’s done lots TV shows I don’t watch. That’s life in this age of 200 channels.

Sparks set out to be a comedian when he was 13. That was 28 years ago. Hard to believe. He looks about 30, acts like he’s still a kid. I’ll bet once upon a time he wanted to be the next George Carlin. But he’s more angry than droll. He could be Lewis Black’s long-lost son.

What’s he so angry about? Silly things. Nitpickers are like that. Sparks is a nitpicker. I ought to know. I’m a nitpicker, too.

Take the night before. I’d given up on TV, but avoided sleep by going online. Checked the website of a local newspaper. Read an article that located a piece of property as “southeast of the SC46-SC170 roundabout.”

Roundabout? Sounds like square dancing. So I was annoyed. Annoyed enough to email the editor. I said it was stupid to use the word “roundabout” to describe a traffic circle. But folks do that a lot. Trouble is – well, it’s not trouble, really, but it is kinda telling – the signs along the roads say you’re approaching a “circle.” The signs don’t say nothing about no stinking “roundabout.”

The next morning, I emailed the editor again. Told her I’d changed my mind. Scrap the letter. I had other nits to pick with other nits.

HAL SPARKS picks nits like they were strawberries. Trouble is, I don’t believe he’s really upset. About any of it. But he’s a comedian, so he has to rant about something. Even if it’s nothing. Look where that got Jerry Seinfeld.

If we talked one-on-one, I’d probably find Sparks annoying. And vice versa. But when nitpickers go on stage it’s different. Performers want to please, audiences want to be pleased. So I laughed when Sparks stomped around, growling about Starbucks: “They don’t sell coffee. They sell milkshakes!”

That’s not exactly true, but you get Sparks’ point. Don’t put a “coffee house” label on a place that promotes its iced caramel macchiato, cinnamon dolce latte and peppermint white chocolate mocha. Trouble is, he didn’t explain it that way. I think it would have been funnier, but what do I know? Only one of us gets paid to nitpick. And it’s not me.

Still, Sparks seemed like my kind of comic. Trouble is – I always look for trouble – you can’t trust stand up comedians. They preface or follow too many jokes with “True story ... really, true story.” Sometimes their noses grow half an inch.

Sparks says he’s from Kentucky. Nitpickers know he was born in Ohio. Nitpicking nitpickers say, yeah, but in Cincinnati, which is across the river from Kentucky, which is where his family lived.

He mentions Kentucky to set up his next nitpick. Says he couldn’t have survived in the South because he doesn’t drink sweetened ice tea. He prefers what he calls “plain tea.” Trouble is, nobody else calls it that. Restaurants offer this choice: sweetened or unsweetened. Sparks insists there’s no such thing as unsweetened tea. The word “unsweetened” bugs him.

HE'S VERY animated when he explains why. This makes me laugh. So it’s a good thing we weren’t talking one-on-one. Because I would have told him, one nitpicker to another, he obviously dosen’t know the meaning of “unsweetened.” The word he defines in his act doesn’t exist. If it did, it would be spelled “desweetened.”

No wonder he’s always shouting “Don’t make up words!” He must be talking to himself. After all, he's the guy who came up with Charmageddon.

Sparks is such a nitpicker he refuses to be called a non-smoker. He says he’s never smoked anything, but doesn’t want to be defined by other people’s behavior. People who smoke are smokers. Sparks calls himself “a breather.”

He offers this insight on smoking bans: the legislation didn’t result from concern over cancer. The real reason was odor. “Smokers stink!”

WHEN HIS SHOW passed the halfway mark, he did something that pissed me off. Like a lot of comics approaching certain topics, he went into pandering mode. “I think marijuana should be legalized,” he said, completing the daily double which began, “I believe everyone should have the right to get married.”

No quarrel with the opinions, only the setting. I dislike cheap applause even more than cheap laughs. Sparks was like a politician promising jobs, tax cuts and a new car in every garage. The audience applauded like he knew they would.

Then he announced he’d probably remain single because marriage was an outmoded, obviously stupid idea. Which put his previous statement in a new light. He believes everyone should have the right to make a fool of himself. I guess he’s the Don Rickles of panderers.

IT WAS 2:44 A.M. I’d had enough. I needed rest so I could wake refreshed to resume my own nitpicking. Like why do people say “glove box” instead of “glove compartment”? Given a choice of changing “glove” or “compartment,” how could anyone choose “compartment”? Does anyone still use this space for gloves?

Why not call it the “registration hideaway” ... the "cellphone grotto" ... or the “junk box”? I mean, where else in the car do you look for napkins, dried out ballpoint pens, old lottery tickets, loose change, outdated maps and rubber bands? And why do some people call rubber bands "elastics"?

I got so bored thinking about it that I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt I was sitting with a dwarf sipping unsweetened iced tea at a Starbucks in the middle of a Kentucky roundabout when my nostrils detected the awful stink of a lit cigarette ...