I am not saying you shouldn’t hang with wild gorillas –  if you want to. Go ahead, it looks like fun.

It is just that they are both intelligent and they are wild animals, plus they have ideas on how things should go.

*Note to self – do not take your pet baby orphan gorilla into the jungle.

Personally I think I understand gorilla culture and etiquette, as it looks a bit like the culture and etiquette in my family. But as my husband knows, I avoid hanging with my family because they behave like mountain gorillas. They are cute and cuddly until you challenge them. You never quite know what you said that got them all riled up, all you know is that they are suddenly screaming and somehow its your fault …

Also a Safari into the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda is like $300 a day, and I’d like to see what $300 a day could get me in Vegas.

I know that someone reading this might be thinking, “but  - but –  but….have you seen Koko the talking Gorilla who speaks sign language? Bill Shatner has!”

And I say to the imaginary Koko loving person in my head, “Oh yeah but what about the story of the Petronella Yvonne de Horde, she loved gorillas! She was convinced that the Gorilla named Bokito, who lived at the local zoo in Rotterdam was her friend…and so she went to visit him almost every day.  She would make kissy faces at him and he would make what she thought was kissy faces back….

But what Bokito was thinking was “Who are you to defy my authority! Lady, I am going to kick your ass…if I ever get out of this damn cage!”

Then he figured out how to break out of his enclosure, went on a rampage, dragged Patronella through the zoo cafeteria, breaking bones and biting her over 100 times.

This coined a new word: Bokitoproof, which was voted “word of the year” for the Dutch in 2007.

Now I do imagine that the best Gorilla porn can only be shot on location.

And I know there are many nice gorillas out there. Like Jambo … but clearly Jambo’s teenage son really sucks.

And okay, this one is just too sweet and too heartbreaking not to share.

* Another note to self, do not visit your pet orphan baby gorilla, years after you have sent him off  into the jungle, and expect him to understand you are only stopping by to say hi. As far as a gorilla is concerned, if  you are family you stay until you die!

And okay after seeing this one below … I think I’d rather go on an adventure in Africa than Vegas.

But I am not hanging with gorillas….nope I’m not… you can’t make me…. god they are so damn cute!

I should call my family.

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:

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.

It’s going to be me (Jeff Simmermon) as a storyteller, along with And I Am Not Lying members Cyndi Freeman and Brad Lawrence, along with additional burlesque by Runaround Sue and Cyndi Freeman as Cherry Pitz. Tickets are $12, show starts at 8PM.

You can get those tickets here: And I Am Not Lying: A Night of Storytelling, Comedy, and Burlesque

This is a cool trailer that our generous, warm and talented friend Tracy Rowland cut together for us. If you happen to write a blog or want to shout it out loud on any sort of social platform that you fancy, do please go right ahead:

And I honestly cannot believe that I just standing here in my office, typing this like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

We used to sneak off to the Black Cat in high school and college all the time, to pretty much see everybody. It was the beacon on the hill, the magnet in the big city that produced Bad Brains, Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses and God knows how many other bands — many of which contained my friends that I secretly admired but never told because I was so jealous — and sucked me right up there. I hung out there all the time in the years that I lived in DC, and now I’m thrilled and terrified to be a tiny part of the continuum that made me.

Imagine if you ate at incredible potlucks for your entire life, full of incredible, nourishing delicious everything you could possibly imagine and then found all these new things you didn’t ever know existed but blew your mind apart all the same.

When it comes your turn to put a dish on the table, you just really hope it doesn’t make people barf on the walls, is all I’m saying.

I am nervous enough to barf on the walls right now. I started this blog in Washington, DC as well, and it’s going to be a pretty weird homecoming.

I made this fun little flyer to promote the show, too. Just go right ahead and post that on your social platforms as well:

I sure hope you folks can make it.

I saw him on the PATH Train a few weeks ago. I don’t see him that often, but he’s not like, white buffalo rare. A JC Pimp sighting brings you goodluck, but it’s rapidly expended: you get the privilege of seeing him. That’s good enough. I have no idea what this guy’s name is, or what he does, or how he afoords those suits that make him look like Flavor Flav starring in a remake of “The Mask.” But he’s probably not a real pimp, like that other guy in Jersey City.

People in Jersey City try to photograph him, and they track sightings on the JC List. I saw him on the train once, wearing a floor-length faux-raccoon fur coat and a fedora covered in matching fur. I asked him if I could take his picture, and he waved me off, muttering “no pictures, no pictures.”

It’s fascinating to me, that someone could want to draw so much attention to themselves in one way — and so little in another. He’s not exactly trying to blend in.

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:

If you want to see more stories, you can do that here, here, and here.

I have a much more noticeable Southern accent in that story than I normally do. That’s because I had more bourbon in me than I usually do, too. The Virginia accent is milder than an Alabama twang but excitement, fun and booze will bring it right on out.

I have two rules for myself when I’m doing a show:

1) No more than two or three drinks max before telling a story
2) If someone buys me a drink, always say yes. They’re wishing well, and it’s a kind gesture

As you can see, there was a bit of a conflict. One sniff of a bartender’s rag and grits would have started shooting out of my pores.

I struggle a little bit, too, with the way that I’ve personified “Craig,” the ‘roo shooter in these stories. I make him sound like a really gruff, caustic jerk. That is not so much an inaccurate description as it is incomplete. There’s a lot more to him than than a five-minute story can really convey.

While he is perfectly capable of cussing a buzzard off a shit-wagon, he also has a huge, generous heart. The way that he talked about his kids, his excitement about having his first grandchild and his tremendous love of the land didn’t really fit into either story, but those are just as important as his sporadic torrents of emasculating verbal abuse.

He took me into his home before we went on the trip, worked around my general cluelessness, kept me alive in some of the most brutal climate on Earth and tipped me out extra for a job well done at the end of the gig. I learned a lot about how to get tough real, real fast from that guy. Pretty much everything I’ve done since has been easier or at least more manageable.

And he was pretty much fine with me telling stories about it, I think.

If you imagine Jeff Bridges’ character in “True Grit” transplanted into Mad Max, you’d pretty much have him, actually. He’s the toughest guy on earth. And you just don’t expect the world’s toughest guys to hug it out with you when you disagree.

I wrote down his address in a notebook after we parted company and promised to mail him any writing I generated from the experience. And then, somewhere in my move back to America I completely lost the notebook. Then the internet caught on, and nobody on earth ever put pen to paper again.

I doubt he’s an avid blog reader, but I’d love him to know these stories are out there. If any of you recognize him in this, please do get in touch and let’s verify it privately.

“Craig,” if you’re out there, I hope you’re happy and healthy and loving being a grandpa. I hope you’ve got your feet up and a cold one in your hand and a whole marathon of “Law and Order” reruns to watch on the telly.

And thank you for everything, so, so much.

I’d just walked up the street to see DeCarlos about a suit he was working on for me. When I walked up the sidewalk, it was completely clear. Fifteen minutes later, this fridge appeared in the sidewalk, maybe coalesced out of some swirling dirty plastic vapors or something. It had no front door, nothing in it except for this one PBR gleaming in the freezer compartment:

The air around the fridge shimmered and warped like heat rising off of desert asphalt. I reached in to touch it, and the strangest thing happened. As soon as my fingers entered the shimmering, warping atmosphere around the fridge, everything changed. A warm heat started in my fingerprints and climbed up my arm, fast, spreading all over my body.

It felt like the sun on the beach the second it overcomes the cool of the ocean while you’re lying there on your towel, just that few sweet minutes before you put on some more sunscreen. I could hear ocean crash in the distance and smell hot dogs and warm pavement. The ocean faded away after a minute to the snap of dominoes on a card table and an old Hector Lavoe song drifting in through a window that wasn’t even there.

The can itself felt cool. Frosty little beads of condensation popped on my palm when it closed around the aluminum. The radio drowned out and all I could hear was hissing carbonation and the ghost of a burp from a not too-distant future. “Drink me,” it screamed.

My girlfriend came down the street a second later and poked my shoulder, popping the whole bubble. “What are you doing messing around in that old refrigerator,” she said. “You weren’t going to drink that open beer that was just sitting there, were you?”

I couldn’t explain myself. I couldn’t really articulate it at all. I tried to tell her that this refrigerator was an ambassador from a time of permanent summer. It was a sort of monolith that had appeared in a rift between the seasons, really. But the words just sounded dumb when I said them out loud.

So I tried again. “Look,” I said, “this is no ordinary Pabst. This is a liquid portal to a dimension of endless summer. If we split this thing real quick, we may never experience winter again! Or, at the very least, we’ll be able to extend summer until our digestive system clears the stuff. I can’t tell for sure which it is, but there’s only one way to find out.”

Her nose wrinkled. She pointed to a man down the street wearing an old pair of boardshorts and a tank top and lying underneath a car. He was not trying to repair it.

He eyed us, and gave me the thumbs up. “I think that guy left it there,” she said.

“I did,” he shouted. “I left it there so y’all could feel the summer up inside of you, too!”

She took my hand. “Come one, let’s go. Stop playing with this creepy fridge and let’s just have a drink with lunch. I like wine better, anyway.”

She was right. She usually is.

Now it’s almost March, and it’s been a brutal winter. I’m sitting here in my apartment dreading the trip to the subway to go to work. If I go into my kitchen and that same beer appears on my counter I”m chugging that thing.

Surf’s up.

In this story, Tracy like so many American girls abroad, accrues some very strange bedfellows.

In related, but more self-promoting news. I am currently experimenting with travel essay over on my blog so have a look.

I started this blog back in 2005. At the time I figured that if I just kept banging on my laptop, eventually someone would recognize my nascent brilliance and offer me a sack of money. That person would also be able to reach through a hole in time and pull out a finished copy of a book, by me, and drop it on the desk next to the money.

Then I’d never have to work pouring concrete driveways or slinging pizzas ever again. While it’s true that I stopped working in both the concrete and pizza industries shortly after starting this blog, the rest turned out a little differently. I haven’t seen a fricking dime of profit from this thing, and nobody’s offered to turn this into a book. Apparently, to write a book you have to do something more than just type whenever you feel like it.

Here’s the thing: while I’ve always wanted to be a writer, I’ve also always wanted to be in a rock band. My early efforts in that regard were similarly misguided. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from storytelling, it’s that making a crowd feel something I’ve written — like a whole, big, crowded rock club — that ‘s pretty much the best feeling in the world. If you could chop up the laughter of several hundred strangers and line it up on a mirror, cocaine would go out of business and the would be no more killing in Mexico.

I was reading “Our Band Could Be Your Life” on the subway a few weeks ago and it hit me like Galileo’s apple. I’ve got the Internet platform and the storytelling skills – and now we’ve got Brad and Cyndi on board, two hilarious, exciting and weird burlesque performers AND storytellers, as well as D.Billy’s peerless art, design, and production abilities.

We’re turning this blog into a live show and we’re going on tour. I don’t know how and I don’t know when exactly, but I’d expect to see some of you people outside New York City by spring 2011.

That’s where we need your help.

We’re sniffing out venues in New York City to try this thing out at home right now, and really trying to figure out what would work and what wouldn’t in a live setting. Because now this thing’s bigger than just me, and I’m flying it by instinct. Over the years And I Am Not Lying has been through a lot of changes, but now it just feels right. We’re a team, a FOR REAL team, and I am just tickled to death about it.

Here’s what we’re wondering, though:

What brought you here? What keeps you coming back?

A lot of you are friends of mine from real life, and you actually care about me as a person, which is fantastic. But a lot more of you came in for some outside reason — you heard me on This American Life, saw D.Billy’s art online (or in print) — or the time the hawk danced on his lunch, or you liked the Types of Bitches or the Hotsy Totsy Doctor Who or < href="http://andiamnotlying.com/2010/brad-lawrence-and-uliet-ayne-are-on-the-moth-podcast-good-for-them-they-deserve-it/" target="blank">Brad on the Moth podcast or the Cherry Pop pictures or shit, something, it’s been five years now.

That’s what brought you in, right? Or was it something else? And at this point, now that we’re in the comfy hammock slump between traffic spikes, if you’re reading this far you count as a fan. What is it? Would you mind letting us know? In between the popular stuff I’ve been trying to write short essays about my feelings and stuff — was it that? The weird shit we find in the street?

Over there on the right under “Categories,” there’s a list of all kinds of stuff that we’re into and have put up here ‪– but what of that should we try to hogtie and throw on stage?‬

We’re trying to figure all this out and crunch it down into something tiny, tight and awesome that we can pack into a van and haul across America.

That’s going to happen. It just is. Because as long as we’re going to be stuck on the payroll for a long time, we might as well have some fun and make a few new friends.