What’s that saying about lemons and lemonade? My New York sister turns dumpster wigs into a good time machine. I just wanted to post her flyer, and to remark that if Emily ever learns to play piano, Tori Amos had better watch her ass. Check out her money-saving blog here!
Well, I’m about to be three years old- This May 25th is my third anniversary in stand-up. That’s not much in the world of comedy, but it’s as much as I’ve ever done. It has gotten me many things, such as being recognized at Montage and at Chaos Cafe. I was having a few sincere thoughts about it, and would like to offer you, dear reader, some completely unsolicited advice.
When I was new, I got laughs by accident. I got superstitious about it. The first time I had a good set at an open mike, I never wanted to go back and “ruin” it. A lot of new comics dwell on and overanalyze their first set, their second set, and it doesn’t really matter. They say, I bombed, or I killed, and neither one is true. You’re not good enough to bomb. You got lucky.
The first time a person gets up to do stand-up, it might be interesting, it might be funny, it might be good writing- but it won’t be great stand-up. There are too many microskills that need to be formed. You just have to do it again and again. The good news is that taking a microphone out of a stand 100 times makes you pretty slick at it.
Truly bombing is a gift- if you can survive a room hating you thoroughly, then you know that nothing can be worse than that, and you can get past it.
Where I am now: I can get laughs pretty consistently. It’s still like a magic trick, I don’t know quite how it’s done but I can do it.
Here is some of the best of the many pieces of advice that more skilled comics have given to me:
Don’t disengage between jokes, keep eye contact with the audience.
The longer the setup, the bigger the laugh needs to be at the punch.
Write a hundred jokes on a premise and cut down to what works.
Try to match the crowd’s energy. Don’t scream at a mellow room, or whisper to an excited, party room.
And my advice is: The first mistake every comic makes is: Talking too fast. Slow down.
The second mistake is different for everyone. You’ll figure it out.
Last Wednesday, I took a trip to the beautiful reservation in Warm Springs, OR and the Kahneeta Casino and Resort. It was so quiet, and so beautiful. I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name, but it felt good to be out of the rain.
Susan Rice and I enjoyed playing the Appaloosa Lounge, where they were surprised that two women could both be funny.
Then was Headers, the bar that Dax Jordan and I performed at in Selma, OR on Saturday night. At Pop 1800, it doesn’t have a Taco Bell but it does have something called the Raw Claw, contents pictured below.
My favorite was a DVD called “Who’s The Bitch Now?” It serves as the town’s main gambling opportunity and adult bookstore. I got a tip jar, I got a shot at the Raw Claw, I got a lot of attention from a drunk cryptozoologist who claimed to be a former member of Arizona metal band a Surgical Steel. Good times.
OK, I like to stop in to the Museum of Robyn Hitchcock from time to time, and there’s always interesting stuff going on. Last time I was there, they had a flyer with a premade font, and my mind was kind of blown- the font was based on Robyn’s handwriting off the back of record albums, and it is called Fegmania! and you can get it here. But when an artist, or someone representing an artist, can find a font based on their handwriting to use on the internet- I don’t know, doesn’t it make you feel like your head is going back into your navel and you’re being reborn?
My friend Sul witnessed me riding my bicycle around and around in the parking lot this morning, trying to hit 10K so I could take a picture in the daylight. She laughed at me and threw an empty pop can at my head, and I deserve it. Still and all, I hit 10K today.
Dr. Spaceman donned their scrubs and surgical masks, and with the assistance of 5th Spaceman Kris Lutsock, who is on the Famous Mysterious Actor crew, took the win in last night’s Trivia Titans contest! It was touch and go for awhile, with two tie-breaker questions- the answer to the final question was Steven Patrick Morrissey, so I felt at that time that we were born to win.
This year, my compatriots and I have become increasingly obsessed with the excellent, multi-colored, ridiculous and divine trivia of the Shan-Rock Empire.
We started going as a joke and as an excuse to eat french fries in a basement, but we accidentally won a few times and things got weird. Our team includes Andy Wood, who is founder and chief operational officer of the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and a Rylee Newton, former Hollywood Squares writer and Jimmy Kimmel guest, myself, a tap-dancer, comic, and fighter, and my spouse, whom I make drive me around and tell me childhood stories about the Hundred Years War.
For awhile, our team was named after various things from 30 Rock, the best living television show, including MILF Island, Never Follow A Hippie To A Second Location, and Every Week Is Shark Week, until another group that had used Werewolf Bar Mitzvah threatened to drop us like jive turkeys in the parking lot, so now we have settled on Dr. Spaceman, the physician who warns Tracey Jordan that bread is a silent killer and that science is whatever we want it to be.
Team Facts:
Team Leader: Andy Wood, A.K.A. The Cute Beatle- Science and Sports
Historian: Ryan Gosling-because he was there. Also, elf-related triv.
Arts and Stuff About What The Japanese Eat: Virginia Jones
Television, Film, And Weirdness: Rylee Newton
Team Motto: “Let Go and Let Garp”
Favorite Question Type: Natalie Portmanteaux
Member Most Likely To Dance Obnoxiously In Order To Annoy Other Members:Virginia Jones
Skee-Ball Specialist: Virginia Jones/Rylee Newton (shared duties)
Favorite Movie: All Coen Brothers Except The Ladykillers
Favorite I Don’t Feel Tardy Song: The Strangler’s Peaches
Special Team Trivia: 100% of Dr. Spaceman is blue-eyed
Our Nemesis Team: There are other Teams?
It all comes down to the finals this weekend, the Clash of the Trivia Titans at 5PM on Sunday. We may come back winners. We may come back losers. But we will come back…men. At least, those of us who were men to begin with.
*please note: I have gotten needlessly aggravated that internet searches for my former spouse turn up on my analytics, so I have replaced his name with Ryan Gosling, because screw him.
Well, it’s not the first time a suicidal duck has made its way around the internet.
Well, maybe it is. It does remind me of one of my friend John Freeman’s dozens of bands, Duck, Duck, Annihilation.
As to complaints that the duck is too well-built to actually electrocute, (this is one product that never considered hiring a customer service staff) please consider either of the two easy backup options, given that you could hang yourself with the cord OR in dire straits, eat the duck, which if you are any kind of celebrity or known entity will result in a six month period where the phrase ‘eat a duck’ will be hipster shorthand for any suicide, which will confuse the heck out of people in food sales.
Eventually, it will end up in Cockney rhyming slang as a euphemism for sexual intercourse, which everything is.