As a guy who failed to make it as a stand-up comedian in Los Angeles, returned to Chicago with no job, and now lives with his mother, Mike Preston has a lot he could complain about. But he doesn’t. “Nobody owes you anything,” he likes to say.
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Instead the Crystal Lake native and former social worker spends a few hours a week working on his cable-access talk show, Psycho Babble, which airs at 10 PM Tuesdays on AT&T Broadband channels 3 and 38 in the western suburbs. On the show–with the help of sidekicks like Mr. X: Man of Mystery and the Very Famous Lance Vegas–he examines why we Americans are addicted to improving ourselves–which in Preston’s worldview means complaining way too much about our problems and blaming others for our shortcomings.
To avoid boring people with your problems, Preston recommends that you ask yourself, “How important is it? And who asked me?” Then before speaking, count to ten, then count to ten again. Once the urge to whine, bitch, moan, or babble has passed, you’re on your way to recovery. To speed the process, he suggests anonymously sending the book to the whiner of one’s choice: leave it on your coworker’s desk, mail it to a friend, slip it into the boss’s car. “Put their name on it,” he adds, “so they know it wasn’t a mistake.”
