Here’s a video of Chris doing part of his act:

AS always, the show is the first Tuesday of each month at Union Hall in Brooklyn, 8PM.

Tickets are ten bucks, available here.

Visit the larger announcement for more information – hope you can make it.

Thanks to a lot of awesome help from Creaghead and Co., that’s about to change.

Starting February 7th, we’ll be cock-rocking the NPR crowd with the And I Am Not Lying live show at Union Hall on the first Tuesday of every month. Doors are at 8, show’s at 8:30 and tickets ain’t but ten tiny dollars for the finest comedy, storytelling, burlesque sideshow you’re going to get anywhere.

Be honest with yourself: stuff like this is part of the reason you moved here. It’s worth a headache at work on Wednesday.

You can buy tickets here if you’re into that already.

We pulled together this cool trailer about it, too. It may be NSFW, depending on your job:

I wanted to start this show for a very, very good reason. I’m doing this thing so that I don’t go completely numb, and I’m trying to bring as many people back to life as I can right along with us.

I spend a lot of time hunched over a glowing rectangle starting and mediating petty squabbles about nothing, breathing shallowly through my mouth and reading tweets about television. I’ve been doing it for years. When I’m not getting paid to do it I sit around my apartment in my underpants and do it for free, apparently.

Everyone does.

Sometimes I think we’re all using computers to row this numbing boat towards a black wall of depressing distraction. I want to do my part to get as many people into one room and feeling something great together for a little while. And maybe if we get together often enough and pool our collective energies into something funny and weird, we can live a little outside of our bottomless pockets filled with lotus petals.

The entire purpose of life is to get as excited as possible. I’m so, so excited to have a reason to hose the town down with excitement once a month. So it’s like a Mobius strip of recursive excitement for me.

Sometimes storytelling shows can get a little sweater-vesty, comedy shows can be too bitter and detached, and burlesque too much, all in a go. This way we can cross-pollinate the best of the best and no matter what, if you’re not into what you’re seeing you can see something else really soon.

I want this thing to be a rock show without instruments, to just cram an entire aircraft carrier’s worth of fun into the basement of Union Hall. So far, we’ve been doing pretty okay on that front, I think.

D.Billy and I collaborated on this cool poster (I think it’s cool, anyway) to announce the residency:

You’ll note that the show on February 7th features:

Comedy from Ophira Eisenberg
Burlesque by The World Famous *BOB*
Nerdcore Rap by Schaffer the Darklord

in addition to burlesque from Cyndi Freeman
and storytelling by Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman and Jeff Simmermon (me.)
**UPDATE**
We have just added bullwhip and lasso artist Chris McDaniel to the show!

Brad and I will co-host as always, and tickets are ten bucks — again, you can get them here.

And like, every million years a giant hand yanks the ship away and rips the planet apart, shaking everyone off to drift into their deaths in the cold wilds of the outer atmosphere.

In case you were wondering, I was, in fact, late to my destination. And yes, I do find psychedelic drugs to be redundant. Enjoy the pics:

psychedelic stand‐up show … a visceral experience from the downtown comedy underground. Accomplished thinkers, authors, poets, and artists join Barris and his band to become one seamless, improvised comedy freak show.”

I caught the sold-out show at Union Hall last Saturday. What I could see of it was really, really awesome, when I could see around a pillar. Everything sounded great, though.

Reggie Watts dropped in at the last minute and did a hilarious set, improvising all kinds of hilarious music and completely surreal standup that made perfect sense and told right-on truths as long as you didn’t listen too closely. If you did, you’d realize he was riffing on the kind of played-out onstage cliches you hear from most hip-hop and rock ‘n roll stage banter.

Here’s a pretty sweet clip. In it, Reggie Watts covers Maroon 5′s “Moves Like Jagger,” freestyles and improvises, and raps like the lead singer of a Cookie Monster death metal band:

Reggie Watts – Touching Songs Improv – Heart Of Darkness – 1.7.12 from Karmalize Productions on Vimeo.

In this clip, Reggie, Greg Barris and the Forgiveness improve a long jam about slack friends, vampires, teen smoking and more:

Reggie Watts & The Forgiveness – Improv Jam – Heart Of Darkness – 1.7.12 from Karmalize Productions on Vimeo.

Both clips were shot and edited by Alex Gaylon of Karmalize Productions.

We had to have her put to sleep today. She was sixteen or seventeen – when you get a dog from the pound, their age is always sort of vague. She had rheumatoid arthritis in her back legs and a dense, growing mass in the bone of her right front leg. Her right front paw has touched the ground about fifteen times since Thanksgiving. She was deaf and starting to lose her eyesight, and my parents have had to give her morphine to keep the pain back for the last week or so. It was time.

That doesn’t mean this doesn’t completely suck, though.

When we got her from the pound, they told us that she had likely been abused in her previous home, but she didn’t have any behavior problems that they could see. She just cringed when she heard people yelling and got a little weird about dinnertime. When we took her into the isolation pen to sort of test her out or whatever, she climbed into my lap and whimpered and licked my hand. How can you ignore something like that?

Her name on her cage at the pound was Sandy, which is also my mom’s first name. We asked my mom if she wanted us to change the dog’s name, and she knelt to pet her and rub her ears for a minute, looking into her huge brown eyes. Then she stood up and said “you know, I really think she’s been through enough. And if you all talk to me in the same tone of voice you’d talk to a dog, and I can’t tell the difference, we have at least two other problems that are much more important.”

Every single time I entered my parents’ house after that, Sandy exploded all over me like a furry avalanche, thumping her tail and emitting this high-pitched whiny squeal. Her tail would bang into the banister and hit the floor hard enough to hurt, but it never seemed to bother her when I came home. I took her running in the field by my folks’ house, and she kept up with me on the sprints for many years, her face split in a massive dog grin. When we got home she’d drink her entire water bowl, maybe knock back an inch or two of toilet water and then pass out in front of the air conditioner.

Then at night, when I’d finally go to bed, I’d find her lying on whatever bed I was supposed to be staying on. She slept next to me every chance she got. Here she is, last Christmas. She slipped away while Maggie and I were hanging out with my parents by the tree, and helped herself to the end of my bed on the floor of my sister’s old room:

My dad’s eyesight has faded a lot in the last several years, and he can’t drive anymore. He’s in good shape around the house, but outside of that, it can be touch-and-go. Over the last several years, when my mom’s been out running errands, taking care of my grandmother, going to church or whatever else, my dad’s largely been at home in a darkened room.

By choice, but still. Sandy always stayed with him and kept him company, and they got really, really close.

He’s taking this pretty hard.

My dad and I watch a lot of movies together when I’m home. It’s all strictly classic badass canon: Eastwood Westerns, certain Coen Brothers movies like True Grit and No Country for Old Men. Sometimes we would just watch the part in “Witness” where Harrison Ford is dressed like an Amish guy and whips some bullying tourist ass over and over again.

You know the drill. Sandy always joined us. Here’s a photo of a couple of old dogs watching rough frontier justice in what I believe was “The Outlaw Josey Wales”:

Apart from greeting me at the door, hanging out with my Dad and going for walks with my parents, one of Sandy’s other favorite things was to eat fresh corn on the cob:

When I came home for Christmas this year, she still managed to leap up and speed-hobble to the door, whining and thwacking her tail around. She nearly slipped and fell on her face, but she squealed and whined and for a minute there, I thought her legs weren’t so bad. “That’s the fastest she’s moved in months,” my mom said. “She always does this for you, though.”

Sandy never forgot to call us back, forgot anyone’s birthday or showed up half-drunk to a party and perpetrated some bullshit drama she should have outgrown back in college. We never had to make excuses for her, never got disappointed by her, never had to put up with her stupid boyfriends or low self-esteem or periodic flakeouts. She was never late to anything important and never found a cooler group of friends to go hang out with instead of us lame-os who had always been around.

All Sandy asked for was regular exercise, regular food, a chew-bone in the morning and regular patting and belly scratches. And in exchange she gave us her whole life, a tremendous amount of love, loyalty and affection that never diminished and never even flickered for a second. Everything she did, she did consistently, with the same amount of feeling. She gave me that same greeting every time I walked in the door whether I’d been gone for one day or nine months. She never held anything against me. And she couldn’t even tell when I was leaving.

Whenever I left my parents’ place I’d gather my luggage by the front door and get my coat handy before going to the airport. Then I’d find her and get down on the floor to give her a long hug and kiss her just behind her ears. I’ll never forget that scent, or the feeling of that soft angel-white hair against my nose, upper lip and chin.

I’d stroke her ears and beard and say goodbye, and she never had any idea. Not the first time I left, and not the last time I left, right after Christmas, even though I laid there with her for half an hour, until I could finally stop sobbing. I knew this was close for her, and I knew that was it. We don’t always get to say goodbye to the people or animals we love the most.

But that doesn’t make it suck any less when we get a chance to do it, either.

Friends kind of drift as you get older. A lot of my best friends have small kids now, and they’re (understandably) not available like they used to be. Other friends carry their own baggage that gets increasingly more difficult to tolerate. And as time passes, you start to realize that all you have in common with some people is a shared past, and have very, very different ideas of what a good future looks like.

Today, my family did the right thing by the most solid family friend we’ve got – my parents steeled themselves and ended Sandy’s severe suffering. But we lost someone who loved us all for the greatest reasons of all: because we were good to her, and we were simply there and available to receive her considerable love.

Whenever I remember Sandy, I’ll always remember all of this, and one more thing. When she was younger, she used to love to go out into the yard in the evening and look out at the neighborhood. She’d stand on her back legs and balance on her elbows, lifting her nose to smell the delicate scents of the night waking up.

The air would be full of honeysuckle and moonflowers, and she’d catch notes of opossums, neighbor dogs, atoms of who knows what else swirling through the air. Her tail would quiver and she’d just drink in this huge, swirling invisible tapestry, and sometimes let out a few barks just to let that coming darkness know she was there, and she wasn’t scared of anything.

I’ll always remember that about her — curious and alive, standing up against the night. She was fearless and in love with the smells of whatever was coming, and totally at peace with the advancing darkness settling all around her.

Brother, did they ever deliver:

The saxplayer handed me a pretty sweet business card right afterwards, though none of the URLs on it are coming up right now. As near as I can tell, they’re called the Funky Nassau Band, and you can catch them in the subway underneath the Financial District, more or less. They’ve got a ton of stuff on YouTube, too. I especially love this slow jam in a Miami Vice suit.

You know, there’s an awful lot of cancer going around. I’m not sure that it’s not catching.

Or, you know how people used to smoke cigarettes with asbestos filters and X-ray their feet at the shoe store to see if they had a good fit? I think we’re doing something like that right now, something our grandkids are going to find so shocking and appalling when we tell them about it. They’re going to say “well of COURSE you all had cancer.”

Maybe it’s plastics.

A friend of mine got diagnosed with breast cancer last week. And before that, other friends and other friends. The words that follow are for anyone that’s been diagnosed with cancer and is really, really freaking out about it. That should cover pretty much anyone that’s been diagnosed with cancer, period.

I’ve just found myself emailing versions of what follows out to a number of people recently, and I thought maybe I’d put it out here so strangers could read this and share it.

Here it goes:

_______________

Welcome to the club.

There is this really surreal, beautiful thing that is about to happen to you now: you are going to discover how incredibly caring, patient, and understanding the people in your life really are. It’s nothing short of incredible.

People at the periphery of your life will move towards the center and you are about to just be rocked by the kindness of the universe itself, expressed through strangers and friends alike. You will be stunned that so much benevolent energy has been thrumming around you the entire time that you’ve been here, just kind of grumping your way to work and back home again.

You are about to feel very small, in a very good way. You will be dwarfed by the accidental unconditional love that is everywhere, all the time.

You are also about to hear a lot of INCREDIBLY stupid shit from strangers and well-meaning friends. Some people may tell you that you should have been getting kale enemas, others that yoga will reverse everything all the way back to the Holocaust.

These people don’t mean to blame you for enjoying the odd sausage with a whiskey chaser. They’re just people who have spent very, very little time expressing the deep and profound emotions that your illness will stir up in them. Consequently, they are going to do a bad job of it when it’s time to say something meaningful.

Some people, people that you might think are good friends may not be able to handle this at all, and may totally flake out. It’s not about you, though. It’s their ability to handle frailty, illness, and mortality.

I was so, so touched by all the love and support that I got from family and friends — but especially by people I only knew at the surface. The people that couldn’t handle eventually came back. Or they didn’t, and I still don’t miss them.

Other people are going to tell you that you’re so brave and strong, that you’re holding up so well. They will tell you this even if you are literally spitting your teeth out on to the sidewalk in front of them. It’s going to feel very, very surreal. Most things will for while.

And you might resent people for commenting on your braveness when inside it feels like you are falling apart.

Like it or not, you have been shoved into the circle of strength.

Here’s the secret: all you do is all you can do. You’re totally allowed to fall on the floor, cry, be scared, whatever. But eventually you run out of that, too. Eventually you take a little nap and the tears dry up. Then you just go to your doctor’s appointments.

Bravery isn’t being fearless. Fearlessness is idiocy. It’s why they recruit Marines so young.

Being brave means being scared as hell and doing what you’ve got to do anyway.

It’s going to the doctor and doing what they tell you. Maggie (my girlfriend, a cancer survivor as well) always said this, from the day I met her: “Everyone’s going to die somehow. Cancer patients just have more reliable information.”

Don’t beat yourself up for being scared, don’t be afraid to be afraid. Just make sure you do everything anyway.

I got a lot of credit from other people for being all strong, but really, I wasn’t. I was a fucking WRECK for about a year. I’m sitting in my office with my door shut and just bawling as I write this. I cry a lot more now, in general. Not necessarily because I’m sad. Mostly I am trying to just let myself feel my feelings, and sometimes they get really, really intense.

If you want my advice, don’t even try not to be a wreck. Just do whatever, let the waves rock your tiny boat. It’s when people use their oars to fight the ocean that they really embarrass themselves.

I don’t pretend to actually know what it really means to live. Anyone who tells you that with confidence is selling a subscription to a natural food magazine where everyone on the cover smiles smugly. What I do know is this: I feel more connected with my own feelings and the people around me than I ever did before.

Given the choice, I can’t say that I’d be willing to trade that back.

The bus ride down to Washington from New York was pretty uneventful. The cab ride to Eric and Sarah’s (our hosts for the evening) was another story. That was when I found out that we’d sold out the Black Cat.

It’s really, really difficult to articulate what that felt like. Everything got brighter, sharper. Sounds had more clarity, and all the hairs in my nostrils stuck out straight. I think my metabolism tripled. We all had a belt of bourbon before going down to the club, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that it burned up before it got all the way through the esophagus.

I’d been getting a cold, and my body did this incredibly strange thing. First, it fast-forwarded through the generative stage of the cold, stuff running out of my head like a child had salted a slug’s nest in my brain.

Then when we got to the club and literally had to walk through a small crowd of total strangers to see this sign on the door, everything just stopped completely:

The cold dried up. My body paused it completely, put the whole thing on layaway.

When moved to New York from DC, I didn’t leave many regrets behind. I left some great friends, but I felt really frustrated creatively. It was like climbing a greasy hill – it took a lot of energy to make a little progress.

So when we got a bunch of great press for the show, (special thanks to old friend Chris Klimek) which sort of surprised me. It didn’t really hit me until I saw all those people that I didn’t even know that maybe, just maybe, I’d come to a friendlier city than the one I thought I left. Old friends came out, too – one guy drove all the way up from Richmond. People crammed themselves into the crannies at the place, and then it was showtime.

And oh my God. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we fricking killed. Imagine surfing sunbeams on a cloud made out of golden thread. Every twitch, every joke, every little comment got laughs. Some bozo sat down front and fiddled with his iPhone and I had to remind him of his manners — and even THAT killed. It got so many laughs that he thought he’d earned a little place in the show.

And as an aside, NO, he didn’t. This show features me, Brad Lawrence, Runaround Sue and Cyndi Freeman. Not me, Brad Lawrence, Runaround Sue and Cyndi Freeman and some asshole in an argyle sweater vest.

But I got lucky — wrangling with that guy added to the experience. Brad, Cyndi and I cut our teeth telling stories at the Moth on a 6-minute shot clock. It was so, so fun to riff out and stretch and feel it work. I’ve never in my entire life felt that connected to that many people, in that much control of what I was doing, just grabbing the giant wheel of a shared experience and taking that fucking thing over a few hills fast enough to give us all that tickly surge deep in the guts.

The Wonder Woman/Cheetah striptease and catfight killed, too. I got the feeling that I could have flicked balls of bellybutton lint at the crowd for a few minutes and gotten away with it.

And in the end, stepping out into the city in a black three-piece suit with an envelope full of cash in my pocket and riding the high of a thousand laughs all the way back home — I think I got as close to feeling something Muddy Waters may have felt as I’ll ever be.

Snipers could have taken us out on the way up 14th street and we’d have gone down grinning.

The Philadelphia show didn’t have the same buzz, but few things in life ever will.

We confirmed the show a little too late to get solid press for it, for one thing. And we really don’t know that many people there, either, and it was on a Sunday night. So it goes.

The show is a big, intense show, and everyone onstage brought their best game. You’ve got to work through a mellow reaction sometimes, that’s how it goes. I don’t doubt that the folks there were having a good time. But it takes a certain density, a certain compression of people to get that focused reaction you’re going for. If the room’s got a funny shape, or people are smattered around, the energy kind of dissipates before it can crash up on the stage.

But when the crowd’s small, I just appreciate the HELL out of every single person for coming out that much more. We’ll pump the show more ahead of time next time, now that we know how it works.

Here’s two views of the room at L’etage in Philadelphia, before anyone showed up:

It’s a beautiful room, and the folks there were really nice. And this happened backstage, too:

Cyndi was flinging her Wonder Woman outfit up on the counter and her (freshly washed) G-string looped itself over my drink. It’s little stuff like that, doing a show in a new town, getting onstage again with old friend and meeting new folks like Doogie Horner that make all this such a rush, and such a weird ride. And the thing is, that coaster is still just ratcheting up the hill.

The way I feel right now is the exact reason that I don’t fool with Ecstasy anymore. All that energy, all that adrenaline rush for a straight week like a hot-tub party with the Rolling Stones, and now it’s like this:

This is one of the biggest achievements of my life, a big fat kill. That meat rots fast, though, and the only way to keep eating is to pick that spear back up and get back in the jungle.

This was our first foray out of town, but it’s going to be FAR from the last. We’ll be back in Washington, back in Philadelphia, and going further and further next time. Best believe that one. Hope we see you next time.

Here’s a little flyer:

Here are the details:

• Show’s at L’etage, (6th St and Bainbridge St.)
• Doors at 7:30, show starts at 8PM prompt.
• It’s $12 at the door.

You’ll see:

• Storytelling from me (Jeff Simmermon), Brad Lawrence and Cyndi Freeman – and Philadelphia storytelling wizard ******
• Comedy by Doogie Horner
• Burlesque by Runaround Sue and Cyndi Freeman.

Brad, Cyndi, ****** and I all met as regulars at story slams with The Moth in New York. Brad and ****** have won their share of Grand Slams, and Brad, ****** and I have all appeared on the Moth’s podcast. I was on This American Life a while back, and was featured on The Moth’s Radio Hour recently, too. Cyndi’s an accomplished storyteller fresh off her show “Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.”

And just last week, we added Philadelphia comedian Doogie Horner to the bill, too.

I’m pretty stoked to meet him – the guy is really funny! In addition to performing on America’s Got Talent (I know), he’s a graphic designer by day — and actually designed the cover to “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

Philadelphia Magazine called him the “Most Hilarious Guy in Philly,” and they may be right:

Hope you can make it.