SXSW Daytime Street Scene | Credit: Brittany Ryan

I’m pretty stoked to tell you this:

And I Am Not Lying is not only putting on a show but a whole tent of action and entertaining education at South by Southwest Interactive this year.

It’s coming together really, really fast and last-minute — not unlike most things at SXSW. Here’s what we do know:

We’re going to have a tent on Saturday, March 10th, from 11 AM to 6PM in Palm Park, right next to the convention center.

We’ll be offering an improv comedy workshop taught by musical improv comedy legend Eliza Skinner, of Baby Wants Candy, Diamond Lion and “Amy at the Club” fame.

We’ll also be offering a storytelling workshop taught by Cyndi Freeman and me (Jeff Simmermon). Cyndi’s an experienced storyteller here in NYC, and an instructor with The Moth’s MothSHOP outreach program, though she is not representing the Moth at this thing. As for me, I just do this a whole, whole lot — and teach story structure and writing in my day job at Time Warner Cable, too.

There’s also going to be a panel discussion about storytelling, from the burlesque backroom to the corporate boardroom with stage and radio in between. Panelists will include me, Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman as well as Seth Lind of TOLD! (one of the city’s best story shows), comedy improv troupe Thank You, Robot, and This American Life. Thaler Pekar, communications coach/organizational narrative expert will also join us on the panel.

We haven’t quite determined the precise timing and order of the workshops and panels. But I know this much – we’re taking a taco break from 2-4 while the Interactive keynotes happen.

And then, from 4-6 PM, we’re putting on a version of the And I Am Not Lying LIVE show featuring storytelling, comedy and sideshow from some of our spectacularly talented friends.

Just guess who three of the storytellers are. I dare you.If you guessed Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman, and Jeff Simmermon, then good for you.

Here’s the really cool thing: we’re next to a tent that gives out free beer. As I understand it right now, this is what SXSW calls a “networking tent”, whereby badgeholders get a couple of free drinks. That’s always where the most magic happens for me at SXSW anyway.

So look: at some point, all the Powerpoints and pointy-headed talks about memes are gonna get old. When they do, we’re outside in the shade and ready to entertain you. Come over, grab a couple cold ones and hang out with us. The whole tent is a polished-up and prettified presentation based around trash-talking with a purpose in the first place — and we’ve worked hard to get good at it.

As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much what we live for. Come hang out with us and you can tell your boss that you went to a few work-appropriate panels if you want.

I’m here to tell you that chickens, like monkeys, go from cute to despicable in about half an hour. They’re vile, magnificently brainless creatures that defecate the way that cats shed – casually, constantly, and in occasionally impressive clumps.

It comes as no surprise to me that Werner Herzog feels the same way. Here’s a little clip on Vimeo (shared by my former human bandmate Tim Gordon)

Werner Herzog on Chickens from Tom Streithorst on Vimeo.

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.

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.

People keep asking me, “so, what’s this show about? What’s your hook?” And man, I have no idea. I used to think it was a live version of this blog. But now this blog is turning to a blog version of the live show. All I can say is that it reflects a huge lesson I learned sometime in college:

Never let your IQ get in the way of a good time.

Basically, we’re cock-rocking the NPR crowd with burlesque, storytelling, comedy and sideshow acts. Sound fun? It better. If that’s not high-quality Saturday night entertainment for you, I don’t want to know what is.

I’d strongly recommend getting advance tickets, which you can do right here: And I Am Not Lying Live at Union Hall on 12/10/2011 — $10

If you’re really into the Facebook thing, you can click here to see the invite and RSVP. That doesn’t actually help anything, but it massages my starving ego.

Here’s a poster, lineup published for Google SEO trickery after the jump:

The show features …

Storytelling from

Jeff Simmermon (storyteller featured on The Moth Podcast and This American Life)
Cyndi Freeman (Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls)
Brad Lawrence (The Moth GrandSLAM champ)

Comedy by
Michael Che

Burlesque by

Fem Appeal,
RunAround Sue & Cyndi Freeman

and a VERY special appearance by
Mat Fraser & Julie Atlas Muz

Hope you can make it out.

The jukebox at Washington DC’s Black Cat is out of order. Or, it’s out of order as a jukebox – it works just fine as a multi-disc CD player, stuck on shuffle. Someone took the protective covering out from under the glass on the front, and you can see right into its guts. It’s pretty beautiful, I think.

I took this photo with TrueHDR via a wide-angle lens stuck to the front of my iPhone 4, then ran it through the Photoshop app and some other stuff to get this image:

I hand-inked the type with brayers rather than inking the press rollers, so I could print two colors simultaneously and easily change colors later. After some trial and error with ink amounts and pressure, I pulled the first decent test print:

And a while later, I had a small edition of posters in four different color schemes:

It was a really fun exercise. For those of you unfamiliar with the process of letterpress printing, check out the sweet little video below. And if you’re near Brooklyn, be sure to check out The Arm for letterpress classes, or to book press time if you already have letterpress experience and just want to make some things.

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.

All I know is that we’re bringing the And I Am Not Lying experience out to Philadelphia and Washington, DC next week and I’m both thrilled and terrified. What I’m terrified of, exactly, I have no idea. Maybe that nobody will come, or that EVERYBODY will come and my brain will restart onstage. It’s happened before.

But honestly, I don’t think it’s going to happen again. I’m so excited to be doing a mini-tour (or at least two out-of-town gigs) that it’s going to go fine as long as I only have two drinks ahead of time. Three drinks and my accent comes out so hard that grits fly out of my mouth while I immolate in a blinding white flame of AWESOME.

The show in Philadelphia is at L’etage on Sunday, November the 6th. Doors are at 7:30, show’s at 8. It’s $12 at the door.

Here’s a pretty cool trailer for the Philadelphia show:

I wrote about the DC show earlier this week. Follow the link in the previous sentence for more info, but essentially it’s:

At the Black Cat on Wednesday, November 2nd. Doors at 8, show at 9. Tickets are $12, available here.

If you’re new here, the show is this: storytelling by Brad Lawrence, Jeff Simmermon, Cyndi Freeman and in Philadelphia, the tiny legend that is ******. We’ll also have a few burlesque acts by Cyndi Freeman and Runaround Sue — and a comedy set by Philadelphia’s own Doogie Horner.

Brad, Cyndi, ****** and I all met through regular Moth appearances up here in New York. Brad’s won a few Grand Slams and appeared on the Moth Podcast. He’s got this bleak Midwestern absurdity to him and he tells stories with both feet on the gas pedal.

Cyndi’s a story coach with the Moth and fresh off her one-woman show, “Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.” She’s got a lot of geeky feminist goofing and well-founded shock at the health care system — and she’s also doing burlesque as her alter ego Cherry Pitz.

Runaround Sue reminds me of a throwback to a Russ Meyer movie with a Pollyanna smile. Her burlesque will put a boot on your throat right there in the middle of a racetrack, but you’ll want to grin about it. You’ll smile and think up brand new cusswords to express your delight at the top of your lungs.

****** stories all wear a dingy satin boxer’s robe embroidered with the phrase “South Philly Hurricane.” She’s appeared on the Moth podcast as well as the Moth Radio Hour and she always wrecks it whenever she’s onstage up here. She makes her bad decisions and worse luck into stories that roll and loop like a Mexican roller-coaster: exhilarating, terrifying, and absolutely not subject to any kind of American safety standards.

Doogie Horner’s comedy is dry, wry, and cerebral. He appeared on America’s Got Talent, but don’t hold that against him – he’s actually really funny.

As for me: I’ve been in more Moth storyslams than I can remember, appeared on their podcast and also on This American Life. I had a small piece in a book called The Post-It Note Diaries that came out back in October, and I’m working (loosely) on a highly fictionalized memoir. It’s based on a bunch of stuff that’s true enough, anyway. As for my style – watch a few of my videos and then you tell me.

I just want this thing to be fun, for real. It’s easy to trigger your brain to squirt junk food chemicals by hunching in front of a computer screen and half-interacting with a bunch of strangers. But we’re all shooting for the real stuff, man – we want to get a lot of great people and excited strangers in a room together and then really go through some stuff: laugh, cry, get scared, yell and throw things. It makes your heart grow, for real. Hope you can make it.