SUBSTANCE

Comedian Michael has been getting back into his comedy roots, doing five minutes here and there at different open mic nights. Last night he did fifteen mins in a comedy showcase at the Groundhog Day Theatre. It was the fit time I'd seen his act. He was good. Real good.

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We all have lives from before, people we used to be, things we used to do. Life changes, we change, and then suddenly we are doing different things. We become different people. In my former life, I was a dancer and a singer. I was a musician and a sidekick, a Harpo to Chris’s Groucho. Sometimes we go back to some of those things from our former lives, but I have no desire to go back to my stage days and my Harpo days are behind me. I found new things and different outlets, like yoga and photography. In Michael’s former life, he was a standup comedian. He bartended to make ends meet, then spent the rest of his time hustling for gigs. One day he reached a crossroads. He could either step up his hustle and really try to make it big time or he could switch gears entirely, go back to school and get a useful degree. Married, with a baby on the way, Michael chose the ‘switch gears’ option.

But he missed the stage.

Sometime in the Fall there was talk of a talent show happening at work and all of Michael’s coworkers encouraged him to do a comedy act. He started going to open mic nights to get ready and working on a new set list. His goal was to keep things clean, but also to not be mean. He was terrified of dropping an F-bomb on the high school stage. Then the talent show thing didn’t happen, but Michael kept going to the open mics, still working on new material. Which has been good. He needed something, some outlet, of his own and he’s enjoying the process. Michael’s open mic nights led to an invitation to do a fifteen minute set in a comedy showcase at the Groundhog Day Theatre Sunday night. He asked me to go mostly so I could video record his set for him and partly to pad the audience, but only if I sat where he couldn’t see my face. I’m a distraction. I sat in the back corner with my phone propped up on a tall stack of chairs.

Sometimes Baby needs to be put in the corner.

I sat there listening to the comics that came on before Michael and trying my best to find them funny. Stand up comedy isn’t really my scene. I enjoy it when it is good, but when the comic is bombing, I have internal pains for that person. Sunday night didn’t seem to go to well for most of the comics. The MC has potential and I could tell that he was at least working on his craft. When a joke would fail, he’d look at his set list and say “Okay….that one didn’t work.” and move on. The two guys that came on before Michael were lost in the weeds. One was high and the other one was drunk or at least pretending to be drunk. Maybe that was part of his act. It didn’t work in his favor. The first guy had some incoherent story or joke involving Wolfman Jack and his dad. The second walked back and forth yelling “Hey!” a whole bunch. It was a relief when Michael hit the stage because I knew he couldn’t be as bad as those two. He also has a no drinking policy for himself and would at least be coherent. The woman who closed the show has the potential to really make it big but she was also too high to maintain a train of thought. She lost track of where she was in her set and had problems enunciating.

Michael was the oldest and most experienced of all the other performers and it showed. From the moment he stepped on to the stage until the moment he left, he was on point. There was a clear cohesion to his set and there were great callbacks to previous jokes. It was together and professional. And it was funny. I laughed a lot. It was the first time I had seen him perform and I think this made us both nervous. He sheepishly asked me after the show “so…do I still have a place to live?” and I just laughed without answering his question.

I like to keep him guessing.

CREATIVE FARTS

Ice ice, baby

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I wrote a tiny story about a woman in a yoga class. It is a fictional story, one I wrote in the Fortune Cookie journal. The prompt had something to do with silliness and I was genuinely stuck for a good five minutes before I started writing about a woman who cracks herself up when she accidentally releases a colossal fart while in yoga class. It may or may not be based on actual events. It sounds juvenile and it is, but I couldn’t really think of anything as silly as a fart. God, I remember when Quinn was really little. We were playing in his room when he farted. I said nothing because we were at that stage of trying to teach him that passing gas was nothing. He gave me that squinty side-eye thing that he does and said “I farted.” in a tone that implied he’d done something sneaky or funny. He really just wanted a reaction. I played cool and said “yup.” and then went about my business of putting Legos together. I had to leave the room a few minutes later because I could not hold my laughter in another second. I know we’re not supposed to teach them that farts are funny, but sometimes…farts are funny.

I was a little surprised that I could write so much on this topic. The story, not the fart, wrapped around the page and my handwriting is so horrid because I kept trying to write my letters smaller and smaller in order to fit more on the page. This happens every time I start writing something in the Fortune Cookie journal. I’ve talked about that here before and so you’d think I would be used to this happening every time I open a page to a new fortune prompt. I am not. I am not ever prepared to have so much to say or make up about a fortune cookie fortune. I am not ever prepared for the story that falls out onto the paper. Nothing I write is really any good. Sometimes they sound like the kind of fairytale you makeup while trying to put a kid to bed because you couldn’t find an age appropriate book to read them for bedtime. Sometimes they have a dark and sad tone. Apparently, sometimes they’re about farting in yoga class. I just keep thinking that the actual story is not as important as the practice of writing it.

Michael mentioned recently that he thought I should write a book of fiction first before I write something of non fiction. Michael thinks I should do a lot of things. He’s got lots of opinions, most of which I just nod my head in agreement and then say in a noncommittal way that I agree. I am not ambitious or driven enough to write a book in any form right now. Honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to write more than a thousand words on one topic. I have a google drive full of starters.

Elizabeth boldly stepped into what appeared to be a living room, though it was cluttered with the most random bits of things. A gramophone sat in one corner with some sort of skirt stretched over the cone. Even more piles of books and papers. Jars of odds and ends scattered all over. Elizabeth couldn’t quite make out their contents, but one of them appeared to contain eyeballs. She stopped looking and thinking too much about it. She really needed this job. Then she saw a man sitting near the fireplace, his head tilted back and resting on the backrest, elbows resting on the armrests. His eyes were closed, so he still didn’t realize Elizabeth was in the room. She cleared her throat. His eyes snapped open and sharply focused on her. “You’re not Maggie.” He said in a very matter of fact way. Elizabeth replied “no Sir.”

I started that one the summer of 2012. I wrote 3007 words before I just stopped writing. I wrote over 6,000 words for a story that was based on a dream I’d had where I was a magician’s assistant. Every night he turned me into a tree with golden leaves that would dissolve into golden butterflies and then fly out into the audience. It was a great trick. There was an idea for a children’s book about an egg with four yolks, but the story grew to a length that was not kid appropriate. Too long for a 5 year old, too simple for a 10 year old. I didn’t know my audience. I don’t know my audience. All of the stories have one thing in common and that’s how they sit there, incomplete, waiting for more words. The ideas come to me and then flutter away like butterflies. Or attack like seasonal allergies. It’s all about whether or not you think in half full or half empty terms. At least with the Fortune Cookie journal I know there’s not going to be an ending to a story only because I don’t end up leaving any room to write one.

My creative writing is more like creative farting on a page.