This is my first blog post on this site.
I am going to start documenting my adventures in the NYC stand up world and this might be the venue I use...so I'm trying it out. Let's see how it looks. Simple. Basic. Lots of room for words. If you have strong feelings in any direction about what you see or read here, please feel free to comment. And tell me how you found the site, because I haven't told anyone about it yet.
Okay... Ready. Set. Go.
I'm nervous, excited...mostly wondering if I can do it. I've tried and failed more than once. Okay, maybe every time. There's a great quote from the movie Cousins (I think?) where they describe the guy as "a failure at everything but life." My best friend once told me that quote made her think of me. It was a compliment, but I may have identified a little too closely with it over the years. I've lived a great life, but on paper? On paper, I'm the cautionary tale your parents warned you about when they told you to major in accounting and work on your novel/screenplay/community theater at night.
The problem with being a failure on paper is that, at a certain age, you look around and realize that you may have missed the train that you never wanted to take, and the man at the ticket counter is keeping weird hours and doesn't seem to want to accept your form of payment...which, even though you still don't really want to get on the train, though company on the platform would be nice, but only if they're willing to leave the station and explore all the other cool modes of travel the world has to offer, oddly makes you wonder what you've done wrong. Your adventures shift from cute to quirky to adventurous (but said with a skeptical tone and some vowels pronounced much longer than necessary) to, "wow, I could never live like that!"
And then you start to look at your life through the eyes of the Muggles. Sure, Harry Potter was special, but he was a kid. All kids should believe that they are special, just in case. It's somewhere around 27, 28 when, if there is no evidence to support the assertion, the rest of the Muggles expect you to fall into line. Marry a guy you sorta like, buy a house you can sorta afford, find a job that sorta doesn't make you want to kill yourself and keep society going.
I've never been good at sorta...but I've been working on some of this stuff for too long to be okay with feeling like I'm still swimming upstream. I'm starting to wonder if my lightening bolt (Harry Potter's scar that indicated he was "the one," for the six of you who don't know the basic premise of the books) might just mean that I'm clumsy and tripped as a kid, landing on something sharp.
Sometimes that wonder makes me want to give up...take the easy road...jump in a boxcar hobo style and cuddle up with a feral cat who smells like a combination of failed dreams and hot and sour soup.
It's weird how failing yourself is so much easier than failing someone else. The one person you can't hide from is also the easiest to let down. I quit on myself a lot. I get sidetracked, sometimes with the best of intentions. Usually with the best of intentions. I'm not sure what I'm expecting from this experience of not quitting for 40 days (check out the significance of the time on the about page), but I do know that I would like my life to change.
No pressure, Universe. I'm going to do 40 mics in 40 days and it's up to you to change my life. Dramatically and...uh...for the better, which goes without saying, but also might need to be said. I'd hate to find myself in an I-told-you-so situation with the nay-sayers in my brain (and sometimes my world).
The goal is to step up my comedy game and start taking myself and my creative career seriously, to show my intention to myself and the universe, and to not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Okay, the NYC Open Mic scene isn't exactly Walden Pond and the lines you'll find on this page are not going to be on par with Thoreau, but this is my version of diving in and giving it a shot.
As my favorite casting director taught me to say, "this is my audition."
I am going to start documenting my adventures in the NYC stand up world and this might be the venue I use...so I'm trying it out. Let's see how it looks. Simple. Basic. Lots of room for words. If you have strong feelings in any direction about what you see or read here, please feel free to comment. And tell me how you found the site, because I haven't told anyone about it yet.
Okay... Ready. Set. Go.
I'm nervous, excited...mostly wondering if I can do it. I've tried and failed more than once. Okay, maybe every time. There's a great quote from the movie Cousins (I think?) where they describe the guy as "a failure at everything but life." My best friend once told me that quote made her think of me. It was a compliment, but I may have identified a little too closely with it over the years. I've lived a great life, but on paper? On paper, I'm the cautionary tale your parents warned you about when they told you to major in accounting and work on your novel/screenplay/community theater at night.
The problem with being a failure on paper is that, at a certain age, you look around and realize that you may have missed the train that you never wanted to take, and the man at the ticket counter is keeping weird hours and doesn't seem to want to accept your form of payment...which, even though you still don't really want to get on the train, though company on the platform would be nice, but only if they're willing to leave the station and explore all the other cool modes of travel the world has to offer, oddly makes you wonder what you've done wrong. Your adventures shift from cute to quirky to adventurous (but said with a skeptical tone and some vowels pronounced much longer than necessary) to, "wow, I could never live like that!"
And then you start to look at your life through the eyes of the Muggles. Sure, Harry Potter was special, but he was a kid. All kids should believe that they are special, just in case. It's somewhere around 27, 28 when, if there is no evidence to support the assertion, the rest of the Muggles expect you to fall into line. Marry a guy you sorta like, buy a house you can sorta afford, find a job that sorta doesn't make you want to kill yourself and keep society going.
I've never been good at sorta...but I've been working on some of this stuff for too long to be okay with feeling like I'm still swimming upstream. I'm starting to wonder if my lightening bolt (Harry Potter's scar that indicated he was "the one," for the six of you who don't know the basic premise of the books) might just mean that I'm clumsy and tripped as a kid, landing on something sharp.
Sometimes that wonder makes me want to give up...take the easy road...jump in a boxcar hobo style and cuddle up with a feral cat who smells like a combination of failed dreams and hot and sour soup.
It's weird how failing yourself is so much easier than failing someone else. The one person you can't hide from is also the easiest to let down. I quit on myself a lot. I get sidetracked, sometimes with the best of intentions. Usually with the best of intentions. I'm not sure what I'm expecting from this experience of not quitting for 40 days (check out the significance of the time on the about page), but I do know that I would like my life to change.
No pressure, Universe. I'm going to do 40 mics in 40 days and it's up to you to change my life. Dramatically and...uh...for the better, which goes without saying, but also might need to be said. I'd hate to find myself in an I-told-you-so situation with the nay-sayers in my brain (and sometimes my world).
The goal is to step up my comedy game and start taking myself and my creative career seriously, to show my intention to myself and the universe, and to not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Okay, the NYC Open Mic scene isn't exactly Walden Pond and the lines you'll find on this page are not going to be on par with Thoreau, but this is my version of diving in and giving it a shot.
As my favorite casting director taught me to say, "this is my audition."