Look, I know I’m flogging this live show on Sunday pretty hard. But I’m really, really excited about it, and I think you guys should be, too.
Our good friend and fellow storyteller Tracy Rowland just made us a magnificent trailer for Sunday’s show, and I’d be remiss in my mission to promote awesomeness on the Internet if I didn’t share it here. There is some mild language, almost- nudity. Which is maybe a selling point:
The always-excellent ScoutingNY blog has an excellent post tracking down all of the exterior locations in Ghostbusters. I was pretty amazed to see that the firehouse that was the Ghostbusters’ home base is still functional, and just a few blocks from my gym — right there on the corner of North Moore and Varick Street.
Naturally, I went over there and took a few pics:
It’s still fully functional. I wonder how long it takes for the magic to wear off for the firefighters that get assigned there.
I had the honor of performing in The Moth’s GrandSLAM back in January at the Highline Ballroom here in New York City. The night’s theme was “Into the Wild.” Naturally, I told another story about the brief period of time I spent working as an assistant to a kangaroo shooter in the Australian Outback.
I’ve been to that well before, and I think I’ve about beat that thing to death by now. Still, I’m glad I was able to squeeze another story out of it.
It’s not every day that a giant lizard tries to eat your blood-soaked pants. And the opportunity to talk about having a giant lizard steal my pants on a kangaroo shooting trip doesn’t really come up in conversation at the office all that much either.
So I’m really glad I got to use that little gem for something. I’ve probably forced it a few times too many over the years.
The Moth was awesome enough to include my story in their podcast today, too. I’ve wanted to make their podcast for years, and it’s a pretty huge honor. I feel like running down the hall at work high-fiving people, but I’m pretty sure that opportunity’s not going to present itself either.
Here’s a video of me telling that story from today’s Moth podcast at the January GrandSLAM, in case you’re stumbling in off the Internet and wondering if I am, in fact, a bald-headed white dude with glasses and a suit:
A new episode of The Standard Issues podcast is up. This one features three stories from January’s live show at Pacific Standard in Brooklyn.
The theme was “Heat” and the performers were Jenna Brister, Miguel DeLeon, and Daisy Rosario. In this episode we learn that the reason Jenna is called Blue Thunder is very different from the rest of her fast pitch softball teammates. Miguel teaches us how to use the Scoville scale to measure anger, and Daisy explains why she never saw Darryl Strawberry hit a home run even though she attended a game where he hit two.
When I listen to a podcast there are two things I like most, that I think work the best. One is sitting in on a conversation and listening to people talk about something important to them, as in last week’s show. The other is shows recorded in front of a live audience, like this week’s show.
There is something about hearing the sounds of the audience as they react that makes you feel like you are in the room for the show, it makes the whole thing seem more immediate. That is why I hope that some of you can make these next couple of shows where we will be recording new episodes and be our next live audience.
Then we have next Standard Issues live show, Pacific Standard, also in Park Slope at the corner of 4th Ave and Saint Marks, also at 8. That one will feature And I Am Not Lying’s creator and editor in chief, our J. Jonah Jameson if you will, Jeff Simmermon.
Now she’s working on a one-woman show show that traces her journey from a little suburban Jewish girl obsessed with Wonder Woman to a fabulous burlesque Queen in NYC.
The show’s called Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.
I’ve been writing and editing and re-writing my story for this Monday’s Moth GrandSLAM, just scribbling it over and over on a legal pad to make sure I’ve got it. The theme is “Into the Wild,” which poses a challenge. I’ve pretty much told and re-told what I like to think is a pretty solid story on that theme. I’ve told that thing right into the red dirt, to be honest. I’m sure my friends, family, and the odd person I am totally trying to impress is sick to their guts of it. I think I’ve worn a track in my brain from repeating it so damn much.
I got one of the best passive-aggressive guilt trips about this that I’ve ever had from anyone that wasn’t my own mother recently. She’s a great friend I met through the Moth, and when I suggested I wanted to visit that old incarnation of that story for the theme, she said “Yeah, I mean, you could do that. But if you won with it, I think you’d feel pretty cheap.”
She’s right. So I’m working on it, but brother, you never know you’ve got something until it’s over and done with. The challenge here is to find other material in that experience, stuff that didn’t make the first cut and massaging it into something brand-new. Read the rest of this entry »
I was all squirrelly last week leading up to last night’s show — wrangling machines, sending e-mails (so many e-mails) and in between the cracks, getting my own stories ready.
And it tickles me to no end that the show was a success. It was Tauntaun weather out last night, the first seriously cold night we’d had in New York this year. Anyone in their right mind would have been home under a blanket watching TV, but we had a full house. And they weren’t ALL our friends, either!
A bunch of people — total strangers — saw the flyer on BoingBoing and came on out to check it out, too. That’s so exciting to me, and that’s the Internet at its best: connecting people who never would have known about each other otherwise.
Everyone else’s performances were tight (say what you will about mine, I’m hardly objective) and the thing ran perfectly.
Here’s Brad Lawrence, hosting:
And here’s Cyndi, Magdalena Fox and Maggie (my girlfriend and a patient, helpful lady) waiting backstage:
I have climbed a mountain of my own bullshit and started yodeling. The avalanche is picking up steam and it’s gonna get real on December the 5th.
Some time ago, I whipped up a bunch of big talk about turning this blog into a live show. I got D.Billy and Brad and Cyndi all excited about it, and then we went and made it happen. For real.
And I’m a little antsy about the whole enterprise.
My first job after college was as a rude little gingerbread boy in a touring children’s theater company. We did three or four shows a day across Virginia, DC, and Maryland. I wore a costume with adorable fake raisins trailing down the front, a little hood with faux icing on it and burst out of a plywood oven.
It was my job to escape from a large, sweating woman in a fox costume, and usually I did. Sometimes my costume would be damp in the dryer from washing it the night before, and I would dry it in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time. I got sick, ran out of money, and tried to sell my plasma to make up the gap but nothing worked. I was doomed to become some sort of indie-rock influenced Krusty the Clown.
Every time I smell apple juice, vinyl nap mats or canned chicken soup I just want to run right into traffic and let an 18-wheeler carry my tortured soul back home. I like little kids when I can get to know them, but seeing hundreds of them in a day just reduces them into this shrieking, messy mass for and I really don’t like the person I start becoming.
If you’re doing something as a joke you’re still doing it, and you might end up kicking a kid in the face. I wish I could say that I learned that from that experience, but really it took about ten years.
I told this story at The Moth at Housing Works bookstore in SoHo back in early September, 2010. It was possibly the most fun I’ve had all year and definitely made the whole experience worthwhile.
