All this is to say that it’s time once again to leave a pair of smoking rubber tracks on stage at Union Hall with the And I Am Not Lying LIVE show, cock-rocking the NPR crowd with the best comedy, storytelling and burlesque in NYC.

If that tiny bit of promo copy that I half-assed during a conference call was enough to make you want to get tickets already, you can do that here: And I Am Not Lying LIVE at Union Hall on May 1.

Here’s a poster, more on the performers after the jump:

Most storytelling shows around here have a theme. This one is the same, but the theme is the same every month: KICK ASS. We don’t pick guests that aren’t awesome, but I’m particularly thrilled about this month’s guests.

Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz did our show back in December and just wrecked the place. Every time I’ve seen them perform I’ve had no idea what I’m seeing, except that what I’m seeing is hilarious and twisted and impossible to imitate. Both times I’ve seen them I’ve just ended up screaming.

Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz will be rejoining us with a burlesque act, and Mat’s going to tell a story as well.

This is a video of Mat and Julie from our December show. It’s a sweet little medley of cabaret classics, but also totally unsafe for work and the best, strangest thing you’ll see all week:

Hari Kondabolu went on the first comedy tour of India by Indian-American comedians in the “Make Chai, Not War” tour a few months ago. I’ve been a fan since I saw him at Eugene Mirman’s “Pretty Good Friends.”

And of course, we’ll have storytelling by me (Jeff Simmermon), Brad Lawrence, and Cyndi Freeman – and Cyndi and Brad will do a burlesque act, too.

Hope we see you there – this is NOT one to miss. Once again, that’s

Comedy by Hari Kondabolu
Storytelling by Mat Fraser, Jeff Simmermon, Brad Lawrence, and Cyndi Freeman
Burlesque by Julie Atlas Muz, Mat Fraser, Brad Lawrence and Cyndi Freeman

Tickets right here: And I Am Not Lying LIVE at Union Hall on May 1.

If you’re reading this as a long-time follower of this blog, none of this material is going to be new to you. I’m re-flogging some older stuff, so maybe this is a good time to push away from the computer and go enjoy a nice spring day outside.

I want to shamelessly take full advantage of the mention to show off what the And I Am Not Lying show is all about here. Because frankly, not only am I proud of the work that we do and thrilled to see the storytelling world getting a little credit … I want to put asses in seats on the first Tuesday of every month at Union Hall.

Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman and I put on a monthly show featuring storytelling, comedy, burlesque and sideshow — and I want to share some of the stories that we’ve done there. We’ve only had a residency there since February, so we’re still building up some steam. But all of us do a TON of other shows around town, too.

Consider this a primer, dive deeper if you want. Today is functionally a Friday anyway, so go ahead and watch all of these at work.

Al Sharpton vs. Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band

These are two stories by Brad Lawrence:

Gift From A Chimp In Saint Louis

Sometimes Cyndi ties her burlesque acts to her stories, and the end result is bigger than either piece seperately. So here’s a story by Cyndi Freeman, with a pretty direct tie into the burlesque act immediately following:

Here’s the aforementioned burlesque act from our show, featuring Cyndi Freeman, Brad Lawrence and Apathy Angel:

We have comedy guests, storytellers, and sideshow performers, too – including a bullwhip/lasso expert and a sword swallower.

You can follow us here, on Twitter @andiamnotlying or on our Facebook page. And I hope we see you soon.

The New York Times gave me a tiny shout-out this evening in a piece about the storytelling scene in New York City. I am referred to as “imposing,” which is confusing, but I’ll take it as a compliment. I strongly encourage that you run right out and read the whole thing. Cyndi Freeman gets a mention in there, too, as well as a bunch of other folks that I am honored to consider peers. The mighty Adam Wade gets some serious ink, too.

Here’s an excerpt that I think is the core of the piece, referring to my friend Ophira Eisenberg:

She explores the taboo, but without the persistent relief provided by consistent punch lines. In doing that, she shows how a story can use humor but not be shackled to it, how it can be emotional without pandering, and how difficult ideas can be articulated entertainingly.
What she demonstrates is that storytelling can give a certain kind of comedy a chance to grow.

Storytelling has grown a lot beyond regular Moth slams. The Moth was the Big Bang that coalesced into the sun for this whole thing, but now a bunch of other planets are cooling and growing their own life forms. The following is a list of storytelling shows that I’d recommend checking out in the city. I’ve been in most of these, and am friends with folks that run all of them.

A lot of these shows don’t have a lot in the way of a Web presence. I hate linking to Facebook pages, but that’s the world we live in — crafting stories and running shows takes a lot of energy, and so does running a website. At this point in my life I’d rather have “writer/performer” etched on my tombstone than “blogger”. Anyway, here they go:

Liar Show
Real Characters
Told!
BTK Band
Nights of Our Lives
The Story Collider
Ask Me
How I Learned
The Soundtrack Series
Adam Wade has a BUNCH:

• Tales of the Cosmos
• Whatever Happened to the Nerds
• Adam Wade From New Hampshire
• Super Stories

I can also see how Moth story slams would be intimidating to people that are new to this. They’re huge, with lines around the block and they sell out pretty much every time. There’s also no guarantee that you’ll even get picked. And if you do get picked, you’re pretty much screwed out of a decent score unless you get picked fifth through tenth. By the fifth storyteller the booze kicks in, scores start to loosen up and judges figure out what the hell they’re even doing.

Frankly, these things should be a little intimidating to first-time performers. Anyone who just thinks “what the hell, I’ll just jump on stage for the first time in front of 400 people and be awesome like I always am, every day of my life” is missing a critical component to their personality and is likely going to embarrass everyone in the room except themselves. I’ve seen this happen. A lot.

You should get on stage and do it anyway, but a little fear is a good thing. It means you’re taking it seriously.

None of the following open mics were around when I started going to the Moth. If they had been, I’d have definitely tried my stories out at these first. I’m not saying that there’s a right or wrong way to do any of this stuff. Any door you find is one you can walk through.

But if you happen to want to workshop a story yourself or test it out in a lower-stakes environment — hell, sometimes the crowd is barely even paying attention — you could do a lot worse than to check these out. In order to win a fight you’ve got to spend a lot of time doing pushups and hitting the bag to get ready for five intense minutes. It’s the same principle here.

The following places are where I go to practice:

Phoning it In – Lukas Kaiser runs this open mic Monday-Thursday in somebody else’s apartment in Tribeca. It’s a warm room, supportive, and sometimes a woman walks straight through with a baby in a stroller and disappears in the back.

Kambri Crews’ “What’s Your Story” held monthly at Luca Lounge. You pretty much have to find this on Facebook or go to Luca Lounge and check it out first.

I Like You, Maude

Oh, Hey Guys at UCB East

Like anything else, there’s an etiquette. If you’re brand new to any of this, I’d recommend showing up and checking a show out first, then introducing yourself afterwards. Get to know folks, connect online. Pretty soon the whole thing will blossom and you’ll be tired of all the emails, updates, and Facebook events. And eventually, your brain will hurt from all of it and you’ll have nightmares abut your own show.

Congratulations: you’ve arrived.

In all of this SXSW and engagement excitement, I almost forgot to mention:

It’s time once again to cock-rock the NPR crowd with New York’s first, only, and best comedy storytelling burlesque sideshow at Union Hall on Tuesday, April 3rd.

Show’s at 8, tickets are $10, available here: And I Am Not Lying LIVE at Union Hall

AS always, here’s a fun trailer for the thing:

We’re a “Critic’s Pick” in Time Out NY this week, which is pretty exciting! I don’t know if that’s an endorsement or just a button somebody clicked, but we’ll take it.

This month’s show features:

Comedy by
Andy Ross (Real Characters, The Onion)

Burlesque by
Dangrr Doll (Gotham Burlesque, D20 Burlesque)

Belly Dance by
Madame X (a complete mystery)

As well as storytelling by

Brad Lawrence
Cyndi Freeman
Jeff Simmermon (me)

Hope you guys can join us!

We specifically didn’t mention it online for a while. It’s nice to think that something can be real without the Internet validating it — and without having to turn it into a story for instant mass consumption.

But still, I wanted to share this with you guys. It’s actually really hard to write about. Every time I try to write down what it means the words look so small and dumb, and there’s so much wonderful stuff that gets left out. That’s because there’s so much wonderful stuff here, in this experience, and in this particular woman, that I don’t think I could write it all down if I tried every day for the rest of my life.

The ring is one that my dad bought for my mom in Hong Kong back in the early ’70s, more or less. It’s jade. Maggie speaks fluent Mandarin, and jade means a lot more to her than some dumb diamond that she’s been trained to want by decades of subliminal pressure.

My lady thinks for her DAMN self. Also, her name in Mandarin is pronounced (sort of) “mei-chi” which means “beautiful jade.”

I surprised her on her birthday at the wine bar where we had our first date. We had our first drinks together there, then over to this awesome Japanese restaurant in Williamsburg for dinner. Every booth in the restaurant is its own sort of private room, with a bamboo curtain that the waitstaff pulls up when they deliver each course. I was going to drop this thing over dessert.

And I couldn’t take it.

We’re having wine and cheese, and seated right next to this pair of girls who are having that same “woe is me” dating conversation you always hear that type of girl having in New York. It’s delivered in a nasal uptalky sing-song, and they always say “No, we’re just like, hanging out, I don’t want it to like, be all serious or something. But like, he hasn’t texted me in like six hours after I sent him this one, so like, what do you think that means?”

Maggie’s snickering and cheerfully chirping, happy at the surprise and loving the wine and generally sweeping the room with her massive smile. That’s her default setting: a smile like a beanbag cannon shooting wads of sunshine.

She’s always smiling at me that way, at least.

The girls next to us are just crapping on in that tired cliched vocal pattern, all uptalks and feigned detachment, and my Adam’s apple is thrashing around like there’s an Anthrax show in my esophagus and I am trying so, so hard not to just drink all my wine in one gulp. I’ve got this rhythm going where I smile, nod, sip wine, taste one cheese, then sip wine, then another cheese in an extremely regulated fashion so it goes

smile
sip
taste
sip
smile
sip
taste
sip

and I’m doing pretty good, not spilling the beans or anything, and she says “Are you okay? You’re awful quiet and you’re just tearing through that cheese.”

To which I replied “oh, FUCK THIS, do you want your birthday present? OK, shut your eyes and hold out your hands.”

It just kind of flew out that way.

So I get up and squeeze my enormous frame between the tables and get down on one knee, drop the ring in her hand and say “Oh God, will you please marry me?” when she opens her eyes.

She squeals and opens the ring up and then looks up and says “Yes, yes, of course, yes! I was planning on spending the rest of my life with you whether or not we ever did this part!”

So then we kiss and I sit back down, and the waitress brings over two glasses of champagne, on the house, and she’s only just a little bit less excited than Maggie is.

And when she moves out of the way, we can see that the two girls at the table next to us have the tightest little polite smiles I’ve ever seen. Imagine a cat’s rectum forcing a grin and you’ll about have it.

There’s a sort of person that sees relationships as competitive sport, like when you land one you’ve broken the tape and it’s just victory laps for the rest of your life, I suppose. These are people who get mad at other people’s happiness and then dangle their happiness in front of other people like it’s an objective truth rather than one of an infinite number of ways of being.

So yeah, it’s pretty fun to think that one of the coolest moment in our shared life together also made a few jerks pretty mad.

There’s so much more to say, but I can’t think of an original way to say it. So I’ll say this and then bow out of the public sphere on this topic for awhile:

Maggie’s a morning person and I am decidedly not. I’m out testing stories at open mics or going to shows, trying to get my stuff in front of pretty much whoever will sit still long enough to listen to me. I’m trying to get back into winning Moth story slams, too, which is kind of an arduous process. I’m usually home by 12, in bed by 12:30 or 1. And there’s always a soft, warm little hourglass-shaped lump under the covers when I get in. I always smooth her hair away from her face and give her a kiss, and she smiles in her sleep. And the other night, after I came in from a Moth Slam, she says to me from deep beneath a dark sleepy ocean, in a small sleep-drunk voice,

“Did you win?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s okay,” she replies. “Did you kill?”

Last night we went to a milonga, otherwise known as a dance session for her tango classmates. I don’t dance, myself, but I was thrilled to just sit there and watch. She danced so effortlessly around the floor with these older guys, her feet stepping and kicking so perfectly. And every time they turned to where she could see me, she just beamed and beamed. Her teacher is a tiny Turkish man, very dignified, but just a pit bull when he wants to be. He said to her, in her ear as they were dancing,

“Your fiancee, he is watching your feet and your face with a great intensity.”

I was. I was thinking to myself as I watched her heels kick the hem of her dress, making it swirl in patterns around her knees,

“My God, holy crap. I don’t know how exactly it happened, but this gorgeous, curious, brilliant woman wants to spend her life with me as much as I want to be with her. We’re neck and neck on this thing, so different from each other and so happy. This can happen every day or every week if we want. Every minute together is such a gift, and we just get to unwrap them for as long as we want.”

Then the song ended. Maggie’s official partner (not her teacher) is a total flake and didn’t bother to show up, and it wasn’t the kind of thing where I could just get out there and learn on the spot. She came up to me and said “That guy flaked, and I didn’t want to dance with him anyhow. You look hungry and I’m tired. Let’s get in a cab and go get into bed.”

And we did, and we will, for as long as we want and at our own pace. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

The act of telling personal stories about one’s own life takes a certain amount of a certain type of nerve — mostly the “who the hell do you think you are” variety. Seriously: why should anyone give a whoop about my feelings about my feelings?

That feeling gets even weirder when I’m using the Internet as a megaphone to get people to my shows. “Who the fuck do you think you are telling everyone to come see whoever the hell it is you think you are” is pretty much the refrain that runs through my head every time I bathe my face in the cool glow of one rectangle or another.

But screw all that, we’ve been busting our asses to pull together a HELL of a week of shows this week in Brooklyn and Austin, TX for SXSW and I want to pull ‘em all together in one place, then crop-dust the whole Internet with ‘em all damn week.

First: We’re cock-rocking the NPR crowd with And I Am Not Lying – Live, NYC’s only comedy storytelling burlesque sideshow on Tuesday, March 6th at Union Hall in Brooklyn. You’ll see stories by me, Brad Lawrence, and Cyndi Freeman as well as magic by Albert Cadabra, burlesque by Cherry Pitz and Little Brooklyn and comedy by Wil Sylvince.

We strongly recommend advance tickets (only $10), which you can get here: And I Am Not Lying at Union Hall, Brooklyn

More info/flyer here, cool trailer here and embedded below:

Second: On Saturday, March 10th, we’ll be offering an entire day’s worth of activities in Palm Park from 11AM – 6PM The Hilton Garden Inn, 18th Floor, Colorado and Red River rooms as a part of SXSW Interactive. We’ll be having a panel discussion entitled “From Basement Burlesque To The Boardroom: What Makes a Good Story,” giving a storytelling crash course/workshop, offering comedy improv lessons, running an open mic for any storytellers, comics, or other raw and rare talents that want to do ten minutes onstage and finally — a two-hour version of the And I Am Not Lying live experience from 4-6 PM featuring the best underground storytelling and comedy that we can find – and some special surprise guests.
UPDATE – 3.9.2012

The tent at Palm Park is flooded out – there’s a whole ecosystem in there underneath the folding chairs. We are moving ALL of the And I Am Not Lying events scheduled for March 10th at SXSW to the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Austin – just a few blocks from Palm Park and the convention center. The hotel is at 500 North IH-35/Frontage Road, Austin, TX. Here’s a map.

Our stuff is now going to be on the 18th floor of the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Austin in the Colorado and Red River rooms. The content and times will stay exactly the same.

You can get more details, including an hour-by-hour breakdown and performer/presenter credentials here: Schedule of Events for And I Am Not Lying Tent at SXSW Interactive.

We also made a sweet Web graphic that you can pass around on your phone or Twitter or whatever, found here.

For up-to-the-moment news, changes, surprise guest info, you can follow us on Twitter at @andiamnotlying

Third: We’re doing a show at The New Movement Theater in Austin, Texas at 10:30 PM – also on Saturday, March 10th. We’ll have stories, burlesque, comedy and we’ll be just tired, punchy and drunk enough to shoot a pillar of pure fire straight into the sky. Performers include me (Jeff Simmermon), Andy Ross, Seth Lind, Brad Lawrence and Cyndi Freeman and some others that we are trying to nail down now.

Here are the official details, with address, etc: And I Am Not Lying at The New Movement Theater.

You don’t need a SXSW badge for this one, just a few bucks. Probably just ten bucks.

Fourth: I’m MC-ing and hosting the Slip+Lovitt SXSW Day Party on Thursday, March 15th from 11 AM to 6PM at Club 1808 (1808 E. 12th St. at Chicon.) The show features a TON of DC and VA post-punk/screamy hardcoreish math-rock bands like Regents and Beasts of No Nation, but especially includes a reunion of Virginia’s own Sleepytime Trio. Essentially, there are nine bands playing and I’ll be telling a story in between each one. It promises to be a sweaty marathon.

More on that here: Slip+Lovitt SXSW Day Party

If you want, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, all that shit. Hope we see you this week — come on up and say hi.

Our friends Ben Lillie and Erin Barker run a spectacular science-themed storytelling show. podcast and online magazine called The Story Collider. A few weeks ago, they ran a version of Cyndi’s transformation into brassy burlesque performer after a breast cancer scare on their site.

The thing is, not only can you hear the story from the podcast, you can also see a great comic inspired by Cyndi’s story, drawn by Tammy Stellanova.

Here’s the audio of Cyndi’s story: The Story Collider: Side Effects

You can see the full version of the comic here, with a few samples below: Cyndi Freeman & Tammy Stellanova’s “Side Effects”

I would be remiss in my role as a relentless show pimp if I didn’t mention that Cyndi’s performing at And I Am Not Lying at Union Hall next Tuesday, March 6th and at SXSW on Saturday, March 10th in Palm Park from 11AM- 6PM.

Check out the sample comic pages below … one here, one after the jump.

Hope you guys dig it:

The Union Hall show is on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012, 8PM. Tickets are ten dollars. We strongly recommend buying advance tickets, which you can get here:

Advance Tickets to And I Am Not Lying at Union Hall.

This month’s is going to be a doozy, friends – we’ve got:

• Comedy from Wil Sylvince
• Burlesque by Little Brooklyn and Cherry Pitz
• Storytelling by Jeff Simmermon (me), Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman
• and MAGIC by Albert Cadabra

I made this flyer for it, too – I thought it was cool, anyway. I’m really into that grindhouse-cinema look.

As always, here is a fun trailer we made to promote the show:

And if you’re coming over from The Hairpin, you may want to check out this video of Cyndi at her tassel-twirling finest:

Hope we see you there!

DATING – ONE NIGHT STANDS ONLY
MEANING SODA DATE
COFFEE DATE
CAKE & ICE CREAM DATE
MEANING A WALK DATE
MEANING MAYBE ROMANCE
DUTCH DATING
THE LIBRARY
BOOK STORE
WINDOW SHOPPING
FEMALES ONLY
THE AQUARIUM
THE ZOO
A CIGARETTE MEET DATE

HAPPY VALENTIMES!!!