The Tears of a Clown

I am going to have to re-think this idea of doing something with my life. It's not my strong suit. I'm not cut out for the peaks, the valleys, the highs, the lows, the Laverns, the Shirleys, the severe depression or the oragasmic happiness - ANY OF IT!!! of following my dreams. I am pursuing one of my passions and I am a fucking wreck.

First off, the catharsis is going to kill me. I dug deep and wrote some jokes about growing up. Then I killed at several open mics with the material. The jokes were about my racist Grandma. (Which Grandma? I'm a white woman. Pick one) Apparently I unearthed some issues and I got really insecure about it a day or 2 before I went up at Zanie's in the Female Funnies showcase for my 3rd time. Was I thrown off my game with Succeeder's Remorse? (I made that emotional disorder up but I'm going to work it into the lexicon) I always want to feel confidant at Zanie's because it's one of the few windows of opportunities I have at this stage in the comedy game.

I didn't get to feel that way that night. I 'm not seasoned enough to know if it was the venue to do more controversial material but I was going to vomit if I had to do my older material. That is a growing pain of being a comic, honing the same material over and over again. but I felt very unsure about putting up new, more controversial material that worked in front of comics, in front of civilians. I had an alright set but it wasn't that euphoric experience I had at my first Zanie's showcase. I got my cake but didn't get to eat it. I ate something but it wasn't cake. You get the idea. And then the next night I was so wrung out and woke up sobbing in the middle of the night.

Lack of sleep, that is my dilemma.

I am not getting enough sleep. I get up too early, even when I get up late, I'm up too long and do too much and don't get it done anyway. I don't even make it to half the late open mics and still I am exhausted. I'm 41. If I'd have sorted this shit out earlier instead of playing tip the bottle, hide the salami and chase the dragon in my youth, I might get 8 or 9 solid  hours now because I'd already be a big comedy star, resigned to mediocrity or dead. It's also so my spiritual imbalance and lack of discipline. I do not try to make myself lay right down after I get home form an open mic. In bed next to me, where a man used to be, is a stack of books and notebooks that I read from or write in in the quiet of night. Very poetic. I'm far from poetry the next morning though, running around my apartment screaming, "Shit! Shit! Fuck" as I try to find my earrings and a hat to fit my giant head and my house keys with 30 seconds til the last bus I can get before I'm late to work arrives at my corner.

And I'm pissed off all the time. I got into an argument with an 86 year old woman at my office day job yesterday over a lost and found box. I would like to think when I'm physically and spiritually fit, that I know better, that she is old and tired and cranky and gets a pass. Afterall, I'm not as old, but tired and cranky. (In my defense, she was a real bitch.)
And I'm dehydrated. Water, water everywhere and coffee has water in it right?

My pee clinks in the toilet bowl like ice cubes in a glass.

And then last night I had a realization -
people who do nothing and do not look deep within themselves have nothing to say so do other things and look deeply and tell people about it. Keep digging.

and I learned a lesson-
It's tough to get laughs from the same set of tired comics that were at the last open mic so don't sweat the silence.

 and I loosened up-
I ranted at the host, I made fun of myself and kept a smile on my face.

 I drank water  and slept in.

This morning I was rewarded with awareness of some goals I have for myself that I had forgotten in the pressure and anxiety of these past few days of emotional upheaval. I wanted to give up like the old days.

 But because I hung in there, I got to see a glimmer of hope.

And I got see the truth: That old lady is still a bitch.

Jokes and Notes

Tonight I went to an open mic at a club on the South side of Chicago called Jokes and Notes. I didn't tell many jokes and I got alotta' notes. It was not my best comedy night ever.

I'm about a year and half in to stand up and I am miles better than I was when I started. Oh but I have so much to learn yet.

I don't know if what I did was bomb but I started off rocky, the kind of start akin to taking a step and in mid-step you know you are going to sprain your ankle but you are powerless to stop the step and BAM! You are down on the sidewalk, your purse spilling all over the sidewalk, your tampons flying all over the place. I tried right away to relate with the nearly all black audience and talk about Prince and his Controversy album. Silence. Apparently Prince does not quite hold the court he used to in the 1980's. Prince might be the only black person talking about Prince anymore. Then I launched into material not on what I am now convinced would've have been the perfect set-list and I watched my jokes splat like bugs on a windshield.

I was unaware that as a newcomer to J & N I only got 3 minutes. If I'd have known I got so short a set I would've crammed more jokes in there. Actually, I suspect that's bullshit. It was my night to eat a bit of it.  I thought I got 5 minutes and when the red light above the DJ went on, I thought I was getting pulled early because I was stinking up the club. I froze like a deer in the headlights. So then I stood there trying to assess whether or not I bombed and the DJ felt compelled to play a hip-hop song I am unfamiliar with but I think the chorus goes something like, "Bitch, get out the way! Bitch, get out the way!..." Do you know it?

As I went off the stage, one woman was actually hiding her face as I walked by and not because she was a burn victim. It was a very long, Dickensian walk to the gallows. Fuck.

Then the owner came over and told me I got the music because I didn't respect the light. It was after that I found out  from another comic what my time was supposed to be. A comedy of errors without, you know, the comedy. But everyone had a good laugh at me as I took the 10 hour, 25 mile walk back to my seat.

The current host of Jokes and Notes on Wednesday is a comic named Marlon Mitchell, a very cute, personable, self-effacing comic who has a very comfortable, approachable style and an arsenal of stories about women he tried to date and the characters in his neighborhood. A very likable emcee, occasionally and necessarily going a bit far with his humor. The perfect host in his element. He did a lot of time at the top and in between comics and killed all evening.  The host of a good room is very seductive and you want to be a part of their charisma, be familiar too. But familiarity is crafted, earned, the luck of the draw on the list and often a fluke. I made the mistake of acting familiar instead of being myself and following my instinct about my set-list and it didn't work. Marlon was funny and the audience loved him and I wanted the same thing. But I didn't pop out of the audience's vagina so love was not a given but a privilege  I haven't earned there yet.

On the ride home, my fellow comic and friend Bridgett and I talked about the room at Jokes and Notes, which she's done a lot. We talked about what the audience at Jokes and Notes likes versus the audience at Jay Harris' showcase,  Jerry's Joke Jam,  likes and how we are trying to find our audiences for our voices as comics. I'm still finding my voice.

I'm learning that some comics will always do their comedy and never alter their work for their audience and others will try to  read the audience and tailor their set to the crowd. I don't know what's best but I suspect like most things, it's in the middle.

The material has to be strong no matter what, but delivery, timing and tone are all a part of a killer set.

I was riding high this morning. I got up early, got a clip on YouTube and e-mailed someone about a gig. I wrote in or on my blog, however you get the pieces there, and got so many compliments on my clip from friends on Facebook. I sensed a storm cloud brewing on the bus ride home but I went up at the open mic anyway and learned many valuable lessons.

Yay, pain.

The real test was walking out of the club with the stink of a bad set on me and still be polite and be a trooper. And I had to do this sober and smoke-free. Ugh. I wanted a smoke so badly for 3 seconds.

I was very grateful that some other comics invited me to their rooms and gave their cards as I left tonight. And earlier today, all those friends on Facebook that complimented me and gave me all those, "You Go Girls"!after viewing my clip,  I am so grateful for them because they reinforced what I know- that I am a good comic. I am grateful to be able to make people laugh. I am grateful to be a good comic who had a bad night who will over-think it but is lucky to be able to get to over-think about and do what she loves.

My Dental Journey

My Grandma would be proud of me that I'm finally taking care of my teeth because she used to nag me about dental care.

Nag- that's horseshit! She tried to parent me! Which was her job! Nana knew I wasn't taking care of my teeth and she had false teeth from growing up poor at the turn of the 20th century in rural Tennessee.

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out when I can blog.

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what to blog about.

I am too busy to write in the evening and my creative energy comes in the morning like it does for a lot of people. Then this morning I sent an e-mail to enter a comedy contest. I woke up earlier than normal to get a clip of my comedy on You Tube. It took all night to download from my older computer.

It hit me. Write in the morning instead of scouring other people's work on cable television.

It hit me. Write about my teeth.

Why my teeth? Well, millions of other people watched and will be writing about President Obama's State of the Nation talk last night. But only two people talked about the state of my teeth last night and only one person will be writing about them.

As my dentist, Dr. Sam Tahbaz says, my mouth has been stabilized. I didn't see a dentist for years. A year or two after I got sober, I went to a dental clinic for 4 simultaneous root canals. Typical alcoholic feast-or-famine behaviour. Up to that point I hadn't been to a dentist since my teens and my mom made me go.

I've held a non-for-profit corporate day job for over 2 years now. I get paid vacation and insurance. After a year on this job I started getting a tooth ache that kept getting worse until I had to see a few emergency dentists to extract a tooth and do another root canal. After that I found a great dentist, Dr. Tahbaz, right up the street from me.

I have been going to him, getting fillings replaced, cleanings and scaling. As he reminded me, my fillings were from the Carter Administration.  Ha! And now, my mouth is stabilized!

I still have some work to do but if I got stuck on a desert island today my gums would hold up for a while.

My friend Julie shared with me yesterday that she hadn't been to a dentist in 5 years and finally went. I got to share my "Dental Journey" with her to show my support.

Of course, I only went back to the dentist because I am going to live, probably, till I'm old. I didn't know this but I have come to accept and embrace this. So I don't want to go forth with a mouth full of "scusm gnashers" as my friend Johnny calls them.

And I have insurnace I should use. But it took me a year and a horrible toothache and a few hundred dollars to get me to use it.

That relates to President Obama's talk in a way.

We should give people medical and dental care but we can't make them use it. That hope comes from a desire to live and be happy. I wish I could give that to people. Maybe my "Dental Journey" will help.

The Insides of a New Comic

I wish there was a support group for comics.

Sure there is AA and NA, for which a lot of comics qualify. I'm wanting one where I could go and hear and share about the highs and lows of Comedians pursuing their craft,

Last night I performed in a talent contest as part of a fund-raising event. I did a 10 minute stand-up set, combining my regular set with some cause-specific bits I came up with for the event. The material really landed and I commanded the stage. It wasn't a perfect set- I could have edited a few jokes better- but I killed. I placed third for a prize of $25, which is awesome. But the real prize was the rolling laughter from the audience.

 And today comes the back-lash, feelings of shame like I pulled my dress over my head at the company Christmas party and tried to shoot gherkins from my goody-bag.

What is that?

Performer's remorse I guess.

There are more than a few artists I can call to talk about this with. I felt more like lead as the day wore on and couldn't stomach going to an open mic tonight that I promised myself I would go to. I've been trying to hit more open mics, or do several in a row and see shows. All I managed to do for my comedy career today was catch up on "Last Comic Standing", which I learn a lot from. The best part of the show for me sometimes are the little spots between bits when the comics say how they have been doing comedy for so long and have wanted to quit and are broke and have been kicked in the teeth and eat bowls of rejection.

I have been performing various forms of comedy for 13 years, but Stand- Up,  just a year. I hope to get kicked in the teeth by it for many years to come.

I am not basking in other peoples misery. I am comforted by commiseration.

That's what I try to bring to my audience I suppose. I did last night. It felt wonderful!  Now I am back down here in the dumps, where I collect most of my material. Hey look over there! I see a few Comics I know.

Ups and Downs in The Hunan Province ( a story for CHIRP- Chicago Independent Radio Project)

The follwing piece was created for a benefit for CHIRP, a story series where the authors write about "Firsts". Within each story, a song or musical artist is reference and a band, the former members of Chicago's own, Frisbee, plays that song or a song from the referenced musical artist afterwards. I wrote and performed in "My First Job" at Uncommon Ground on June 30th, 2010. My story is entitled, "Ups and Downs in The Hunan Province". I referenced Prince and the "Purple Rain" Soundtrack. I let the musicians choose the song and they chose, "Take Me With You", which was a great choice. Here is the piece-

My first job that paid me in cash rather than in pizza-

Was the type of summer job you'd expect a 15 yr old girl to have over summer break-

As an elevator operator for a Chinese restaurant.

I was on summer vacation from the School for Creative and Performing Arts where I was a Drama major and Art minor which I later switched to a Creative Writing minor, eventually switching to not going to school. 2 dance major-friends of mine, Tracy and Judith, had gotten jobs running the elevator at the House of Hunan Restaurant and there was a spot for one more person- was I interested? I said "Cool. I'll do it". Just that much thought went into my employment there because I had to get whatever my friends had, a thread of belief that made up the fabric of my entire youth, my first drunk, giving away my virginity to my best friend's charismatic high-school-dropout boyfriend, a few bouts of the clap, shop-lifting, running away and mohawks.

As Oscar Wilde said, “Youth is wasted at the Clinic."

I even walked like Tracy and Judith, like dance majors, with my feet turned out in first position, like duck feet, which were on the menu.

For a well-regarded Chinese eatery with an impressive menu and elegant interior, the owners, Sue & Sonny (not there Chinese names) had a somewhat lax interview process. There was none. The references of my turned-out friends were enough for them to hire me. I wish all employers had similar practices.

2 evenings a week, in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, in an old, commercial brick building I would answer the ring of a bell and transport eager diners from a dingy, linoleum covered ground floor lobby to the second floor, to the delicacies of the Orient, to the House of Hunan.

Operating the actual elevator took me a couple of weeks to master, trying to maneuver the hand crank to get the car level with the floor so the guests weren't doing a Neil Armstrong into the restaurant. The guests were enchanted with the elevator. It amused me to make people happy. The guests responded with ooh's and aah's and tales of riding in old elevators when they were kids, or they'd make jokes. They'd make these jokes:

5th floor please ha ha ha.

Lady’s lingerie ha ha ha.

And my favorite joke, made by local television personality and host of the kiddie show of the same name- Uncle Al-

"I bet this job has a lot of ups and downs."
This joke was my favorite because in my first real, brave act I responded,

‘Yes, and that joke is one of them.”
Which made Uncle Al laugh loudly and me feel very proud.

Occasionally someone used physical humor, pretending to trip as they got off the elevator though I was sure I lined it up perfectly. Oh, You jokester!

Looking back at getting that job, it was an unintentional departure from my otherwise Larry Clarkesque existence, because the 2 nights a week I worked, I never drank there, never screwed anyone, never even smoked a Marlboro red and always dressed appropriately. I was on time.

Maybe the MSG was having an effect on me.

I just sat at the end of the bar, sorting the menus and waiting for the bell to ring, fantasizing how I was going to make it from this place to Minneapolis and get discovered by Prince because he needed a tall, gangly white girl to round out his entourage. A straight one.

Look, there were many opportunities in my life to go on to be star in music, dance, theater, art and writing, right in my school - Carmen Electra went there- but one had to participate, had to audition and I was too frightened, though I didn’t know I was afraid. My fear came out in jealousy, resentment, bitterness, rage and self-hatred. My head was really loud with self-loathing pep-talks. All I knew was to follow my brain, not the yelling of Moms, advice of teachers, counselors and friends. Instead of honing my craft, I drank away the voices. At school I was a hoodlum, a juvenile delinquent in leg warmers and backwards Forenza sweaters.

During my first shift at the restaurant, I was invited to sit at the family table and share the shift meal with Sue, Sonny and some family. We made as much short, awkward conversation as the language barrier allowed. They smiled though when I ate with chopsticks and I thought, "Well this is my new family." However, on my 2nd shift, when I plopped down in their booth for the shift meal, Sue gave Sonny a look and he said, "No, you sit over there," and pointed to the empty bar.

I felt embarrassed and sorry for myself for a few shifts but I went back. liked the break from the party house, or party garden apartment, I hung out at, where my fellow delinquents and I hung out drinking and screwing each other. Then I'd go home in my jizm-stained mini skirt, put the Purple Rain Soundtrack and stare in the mirror, crying and singing along-

How can you just leave me standing / alone in a world that's so cold…

I was miserable, lying to my Mom while she worked 2 jobs, lying to come off like a nice American girl at the Chinese restaurant, lying to myself by entertaining fantasies of my greatness while not working on what might make me great.

Sonny made idle chit-chat with me once. "Do you like Michael Jackson?" I should have said, “Yes”, offered any polite interaction but I shut him down. "Um, no." Sonny looked at me puzzled and walked into the kitchen. I was losing it. I was a fraud, a dangerous fraud, my presence corrupting his restaurant.

I read so much into everything because there was a lot to read.

Culturally I was not impacted by working for this Taiwanese couple, not inspired to investigate their culture, because, outside of the food they ate their physical appearance and language, they kept seeming familiar. Sue wore a fur coat, they lived in the suburbs, they thought all races were inferior to theirs, blacks, whites, Vietnamese, poor and uneducated people –thought their shit didn’t stink. They seemed like Americans. Sue smacked a waiter on his head once. It was rumored Sonny beat the illegal cooks in the kitchen. But was this Chinese? Was it American? Or just the restaurant business? I guess I expected Confucius wisdom and calming Buddha quotes to pour out of my bosses because they were Chinese, but they just sounded like my relatives, my Croatian ones, my Latvian ones and my Tennessee hillbilly ones. But they gave me a job so I tried to be on their side and see their hard work and desire for a good, secure life. Besides, I was too entrenched in the glamorous world of teenage alcoholism to protest any injustices. I was too hung over to care.

I kept the job all summer and through the first quarter of the school year when consequences caught up with me and I got pregnant. It was automatically understood between my mother and me that I would get an abortion. I gave my 2 weeks notice to the restaurant because I was ashamed to be there though my Bosses never knew. I worked my last shifts, suffering with morning sickness so that I could not even enjoy the food.

I left there and slid down the tubes.

There were no more silly fantasies of going to live at Paisley Park, sorting Prince’s dry-cleaning and having his ear. I found much more hateful music in the Punk scene. There was no job driving the elevator. There was nothing. I went into a well-deserved depression.

I want to assure you though, that even the most Harmony Corrinian of kids can turn it around to become okay. I’m alright. I enjoy Chinese food, and when I run across an old-fashioned, hand-operated elevator, I find it much more than quaint. Ofcourse I say to the person running it,

“I bet this job has a lot of ups and downs.”

The Ha Ha Hotties

It would be awesome if I were sitting around at a table in a diner right now, talking about comedy with comics. Instead, I am typing on my old, used computer, my cigarette smoke mingling with the pleasant smell of a Glade scented candle, the "Monk" series finale playing in the background.

I just got home from performing in an all-female stand-up comedy showcase called, "The Ha-Ha-Hotties" produced by The Edge Comedy Club at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts.

It's the second time I've done this showcase. I love it because there is a great comfort in performing with the same gender. Age and weight jokes are parr for the course. But even though I find it comforting, I am still challenged by the other comics, which is so healthy. And like all healthy things, I hate them when I am experiencing them, but so grateful for the results.

 I was intimidated by the looks and ages of the other women, but at the end of it all, it was the range of material that scared and inspried me. Ultimately, it was all the other comic's material that made me laugh.

I've been doing performing stand-up comedy consistently since this summer, since July or August. I am such a newcomer, such a babe, an old, tattooed babe, in the comedy woods.

This past June I turned 40 years old and for the year leading up to my 40th birthday, the idea of trying stand-up comedy was in my brain. The thought turned into a fear, an obsession and after some mulling it-over, prayer and counsel with friends, it turned into a goal. I've never had a real goal in my life. I've done some things, and finished some of those things even. But outside of a man or getting wasted, I've rarely pursued much.. Mostly I've fallen into things I like. But I'm funny, and I've come to realize that this is my skill and it's almost my duty to try to craft, shape and deliver being funny.

I wish my life were different in many ways as I pursue being a stand-up comic. I wish I didn't have to work a day job so I could stay up late and go to more open mics. I wish I had started younger. I wish I didn't have to wrestle with my own immaturities of making studio time for my writing. But I cannot change these things, aside from getting fired from a job I am lucky to have and often enjoy. I wish I would have watched the "Monk" series when it first aired on television.

I have the stuff to try it right now. I just pray that I increase the momentum and go somewhere with it, arriving just as I am.

Really fucking funny.

Quality Problems

Someone, somewhere is getting bombed.

My neighbor, my neighborhood, are no exceptions.

Alright, I don't mean bombing in the sense of war. I'm talking about getting a snoot-full.

I live in a very trendy? hip? active? yes!- active neighborhood in Chicago. There are a lot of bars and restaurants. This is a good thing overall except for the fact that everyone of them puts an outdoor cafe on the sidewalk and the availability of simple walking space has been chewed up and swallowed.

It's not entirely outdoor cafes that have taken up the sidewalk. There are 14 different varieties of parking, loading zone and tow zone signs, giant planters and public sculptures. And waiting to be seated outside, getting edified on the myriad of parking challenges and wondering "what the hell that big red thing outside of Burton Place is because it looks like a giant crab claw and does that mean they serve seafood, oh they don't!"- are gaggles of people. Tourists, the drunken-fist-fighting-tube-topping-$65 dollar-flip-flopping-shiny, happy post-college party crowd, the swarthy and sinister valet mob, the double-wide stroller yuppies in all their Northface fleece-laden entitlement who are teaching their kids to ride bicycles and scooters down the sidewalk while walking large pure-breed dogs, botox, boob-jobbed-cigar-smoking denizens of the Viagra Triangle who wander over to Old-Town for something different to do. They are chewing up the thoroughfare. Also idiot joggers, not idiots for exercising but for including Wells St. on their fitness route and bands of poor kids from the nearbye housing projects destroying the newspaper boxes and littering. Let's not forget them. Oh, and hostile, singing, poetry-reciting panhandlers that smell like pee. Them too.

Let's just say it takes 15 minutes on a sunny Saturday afternoon to get to Walgreen's 2 blocks away.

Here is a little diddy I wrote for the all female sketch comedy troupe I was in called BLAIRE. The song was an observation about a similar northside Chicago neighborhood where I often work and how all the small businesses, the charm and diverse ethnic food that used to be there has been replaced by one particular moronic, faux-ethnic, establishment. I will not name the specific faux-ethnic endeavor for fear of of being labled a faux-racist. Instead I will let the heavily veiled title and lyrics speak for themselves.

It's called "Irish Bar"

In villes of Wrigley
Where girls are jiggly
And beer flows flat from the tap


Lay me down
On that Lakeview ground
In a puddle of puke and crap


For I am drunk
A sodden slam-drunk
In my backwards baseball cap


Oh let me lie here
Oh let me die here
Bellied up to an Irish Bar


I take my Miller shite
My Marlboro lite
And I can't find my f***in' car


But worry no more
We'll just go next door
To another f***in' Irish Bar!

You get the idea.(Thanks to Annie Rubino for the language of the Miller/Marlboro verse.)

Back to the hazards of Old Town.

After gearing up for the regularly occuring obstacle course that is the block of Wells St between North Avenue and Schiller St, getting zen and focused with my with my game plan-BAM! I forget that there is an art fair, wine-tasting event or block party right outside my door and I find myself haggling with some dick-head frat-guy security guard over whether or not I'm going to pay 5 bucks to get in so I can go buy toilet paper and Splenda on the next block. Sometimes I argue but mostly I take LaSalle St.

Okay, I'm bitter, tired and have poor time management skills when I run errands or this wouldn't be an issue.

Despite the grousing in this post, I am not the psycho who keeps ripping out the flowers out of the flower boxes in front of Orso's and the frame shop. I'm always sad when that happens.

Honestly, I am lucky to live here. I could live in a lot worse places with war and land-mines tearing my community to bits. I could live in a blighted area with no commerce, with rampant street crime, and economic desperation slapping me in the face every minute of everyday.

It boils down to wishing my chunk of the city was a little quieter when I'm trying to watch "Hung" or "Design Stars" on On Demand while walking a brisk pace on my treadmill.

It's clear that I fit right in where I live.

Ghandi said, "If you want the world to change, be the way you want the world to be". So I am going to do what I want the chattering whiskey kitties on their cellphones blocking the 2 inches of free space in front of Subway and the delirious wino who is sitting on the stoop and singing loudly just under my window as I write this to do.

I'm going to shut the f*** up and move on.