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.

It’s an all-girls hotel that has gone through many owners. It was originally incorporated by a religious order called “The Righteous Order Of Frustrated Spinsters With Too Many Cats” and envisioned as a reformatory residence for girls gone bad.

See, the spinsters believed that if you took a girl away from her nefarious environment and surrounded her with cats, she would no longer crave illicit temptation as there would be so many warm friendly pussies to snuggle up with.

I will hosting this week’s show & the cast is:  Jenny C’est Quoi, Gal Friday, Calamity Chang, Go Go Harder and more!

Hotsy Totsy is is part of the Burlesque Blitz: A week of burlesque at the Horse Trade Theater Company in NYC. We will be performing at The Kraine Theater, 85 East 4th Ave (Between 2nd & 3rd Ave) NYC – Dec. 28th – 8pm – for tickets and info go to - http://horsetrade.info

And we have a new sponsor: Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, who will be supplying awesome swag and drink specials!

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.

That would be pretty much the only thing harder to explain to my girlfriend why I spent a hundred bucks on M.U.S.C.L.E. figures in the first place.

Instead, I took this photo. It turned out to look pretty Juxtapoz/La Luz De Jesus, and I’m pretty alright with that. Hope you dig it, too:

The show is called LX.TV 1stLook NY. To be specific, I’ll be on WNBC, channel 4 (channel 704 in HD) on Time Warner Cable, Saturday Oct 1 at 7:30pm and rerun on Sunday at 1AM after SNL. Catch it on TV if you can, or find the piece on their site http://lxtv.com/1stlookny/.

The segment covers the show Moonlight Rendezvous, produced by the gorgeous Lana Firebird. It will feature David Slone, Cherry Pitz, Ivory Fox and The Lady Aye, all at Paris Cabaret Club! Many thanks to LX.TV.

And naturally, Cherry and I will be in our live show at Union Hall on Wednesday — hope we see you there!

This led to researching fairy tales. Which was hours and hours of eye opening fun. Now, I was raised on the fairy tales the way Disney told them.

And I knew that Disney edited all the juicy stuff out.

The Grimm’s originals were much more dark and dangerous. But what I was surprised to find out was that Disney was not the first to clean up these stories.

The Brothers Grimm did plenty of editing themselves. They spent years collecting folktales, but being devout Calvinists, pretty much all the sex had to go. You should read the French version of Little Red Riding Hood!

And SLEEPING BEAUTY as told by the Italians. Jeepers!

So here it is….First, to review, this is how it was told by the Brothers Grimm, it goes something like this.

There was once a king and queen who had a feast in honor of their newborn daughter. They decided to invite all 13 wise women of the kingdom, who could bestow magical blessings on the child. But alas, there were only twelve plates so one got left out and she went all Housewives of New Jersey about it. She crashed the party and cursed the child that on her 15th birthday she would prick her finger on a spindle and die.

Luckily the other wise woman were able to soften the spell and turn it from death to sleep, but that was the best they could do.

All the spindles were banished from the kingdom, but it happened that on her 15th birthday, pretty little Briar Rose went snooping around the castle while her parents were out and she found a spindle, thus pricked her finger and feinted straight a way into a dead sleep – and so did everyone at the castle. And the castle unattended became hidden behind a thick mass of thorny shrubs. One day 100 years later a handsome prince made it through the dangerous thicket, found the princess kissed her, and she woke up and they were married and they all lived happily ever after.

Now for the Italian version, which is called The Sun And Moon And Talia.

In this version it is not a prince, but the King himself who finds the sleeping girl (Talia). She is so hot, that he does her right then and there, which does not wake her up. Nine months later she gives birth to twins, and this does not wake her up. Then one day a baby chewing on her finger dislodges the splinter, and finally she wakes up and finds she’s got two kids. Now this makes her so happy she names them her “Sun” and her “Moon”.

Some time passes and the King, feeling randy, comes back to do her again and he finds her awake, he tells her “These children are mine!”, and she is so happy she’s all “Stay for the weekend.” So he does and they do it for three whole days.

Meanwhile the Queen gets wind of all this and sends a messenger to invite Talia to live at the palace. Then the Queen tells the cook that when the small family arrives at the castle, he is to bake her children, little Sun and little Moon, into a feast to serve to the king. Still feeling pissy, the Queen then invites Talia to court, with the plan of throwing her in a raging fire pit.

Talia puts on her best dress and arrives at court and is like “What? Um, and who are you?”

And The Queen is like, “I am the Queen!”

Talia’s all like, “He didn’t say he was married.”

And the Queen is like “Yup, he is you little slut and now you are going to jump into that fire pit and die.”

Talia’s all like “What fire pit? Oh that fire pit.” She delays it all by saying “Okay, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to take my clothes off before jumping in the fire pit.”

Now the Queen whose been thinking “I hate this girl but man that is one pretty dress” as all “Sure, take it off.”

So, Talia starts taking off her clothes and with each article she removes she screams at the top of her lungs. The loud commotion gets the attention of the King and he comes in and is all “Hello ladies!”

But the Queen says, “Not so fast buckaroo, I’m killing your mistress and the cook has already baked your bastards into pies.”

The king is so furious he throws the Queen into the fire pit and is looking to do the same to the cook. But the cook says, “No King, sir, I didn’t do it. I made lamb pies, seriously.” He calls out to his wife “Get the children!” And the cook’s wife, who has been hiding the kids, gets the children and out the run, all cute, happy and unharmed.

The King is happy and Talia is happy, the old witch who started all of this is never heard from again and there is a big wedding and the whole family lives happily ever after….

I’m not sure what the moral is but it’s either “It’s good to be King”, or “Never cook the babies – not even if the Queen says so.”

Everyone who can remember September 11th, 2001 has a story. That includes me. I wasn’t in New York or DC or rural Pennsylvania, so mine’s not that dramatic. But if I went around trying to win suffering contests, I’d imagine that my life would look a lot different than it does now.

Both the phone and the electric company caught up to me on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I had a story due to Richmond.com at the time, a freelance project that had been filling a hole in my tattered writing income. I didn’t really need the electricity that morning anyway — I didn’t own a computer in the first place. I’d sneak into campus computer labs or squat at friend’s places when I had to, typing down handwritten notes in order to get the thing written as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So I did what I always did when the deadline was tight. I climbed out my bedroom window onto the row house roof and jimmied open my neighbor’ Kate’s office window with a credit card I didn’t deserve. Then I climbed in, turned on the dialup modem and made my final edits while the connection hissed and fused.

I sent the piece in and then cleaned her cat’s litter box to show both gratitude and penance. Then I called the office. Kate answered – she was a writer there. “Who is this?” she asked, recognizing her own number on her caller ID. “Uh, sorry” I said. “Listen, we’ll talk about this later. Turn the TV on, now,” she said, and hung up the phone.

I turned it on and watched a few minutes, trying to make sense out of it. Then the second plane hit and everyone in the world realized what really happened. A few seconds later, the station feed jumped to a scene from a Frank Zappa film. Cotton smoke boiled through a cheaply made model town, cars crashed into styrofoam gravestones and Zappa’s face hovered over top of it, grinning. Then whoever it was at the TV station fixed the problem and the news came back on.

I’m not sure if any other Richmonders saw that too, or not. I’ve never discussed it with anyone, actually. That was far from the strangest thing that happened that day and pointing it out never seemed that important.


I watched the planes hit, people jumping, the buildings collapsing and the huge wave of smoke and soot moving uptown on television. Then I went outside, shellshocked like every other American. I remember cars parked sideways in the middle of the street, just pulled over and abandoned, taillights blinking.

The rumors were flying around that planes had hit Camp David, that there were nuclear bombs going off, that the subways were burning. We saw the escort jets shoot overhead a few times, and then the sky was silent.

I remember holding strangers’ hands at a coffee shop, telling each other it was going to be okay eventually.

Eventually it got dark. We sat out on the porch, looking up at the sky and seeing nothing. No blinking lights from the airport, no stars, nothing. We talked about how everything was going to be different from now on, and nobody knew what it was going to be like.

The consensus was that it was pretty much going to suck.

I’m fortunate to not have lost anyone I knew or loved that day. I never knew anybody who even went down to help out and got sick. I can’t imagine what that must be like for the victim’s families and friends. But I feel like we all lost each other that day. Ever since then, things have gotten more hostile, more polarized in out public discourse. People are divided over their beliefs like never before. And they’re overlooking the one deepest belief that every human being should hold the dearest:

If we’re going to make it through the world, we’ve got to make patience our default setting.

There are a lot of more poignant 9/11 stories flying around today, but this one is mine.

I’ve seen a lot of whining about the ceaseless cable television coverage of the 9/11 anniversary, and I’ve done a little myself, saying on Facebook:

I actually wasn’t in danger of forgetting about 9/11/01 anytime soon. While I think it’s important to memorialize the victims and make the day a part of our history, I don’t really feel like reliving it on TV and the Internet.

I thought about it a little more, though. And it’s mostly still true. But this happened in America, to Americans. And nobody ever said that we were a culture that understood restraint, respect, and somber dignity. That shit’s for Swedes.

This thing affected everybody. And most people aren’t that good at communicating deep, profound experiences. It’s just not a priority for most normal human beings. But that doesn’t mean that something deep and profound doesn’t happen to them. And when it does, they deserve to share their stories and take part in the great feedback loop that is sharing, listening, and healing.

After all, nobody’s making anybody watch television or click on anything online. I suspect that most of the people who have read this far have done it because they’re my friends and they care about me.

It’s okay to leave the TV off, turn the TV on, do nothing or wave a cheap American flag and listen to Lee Greenwood. Whatever you can think of to get through something traumatic is fine by me.

As long as it doesn’t involve passing the hurt on and making some other strangers grieve just as badly.

I had to hustle home and meet the cable guy last Friday, which had me out and racing through the sun on Columbus Circle at about one o’clock. Whenever it’s beautiful out and I’m wearing a three-piece suit (which is often) I’m hit with two conflicting emotions:

1) Get out of the cursed sunshine before you rehydrate the last set of sweatstains you left this thing
2) My God, what have you BECOME?

So as I’m hustling between pockets of shade, fast, but not so fast as to break a sweat, I see this woman. And I just kind of stop and stare. She looks so, so familiar. I can’t figure out if I know her from college radio, or she worked at a bar I used to go to all the time in Richmond, or we’ve been in the same show before, or what. I’m running the facial recognition software in my head at a million miles an hour, but it’s not fast enough. Because she sees me staring a little, and does the polite little sidle that any smart woman in New York does when some creep is just staring at her with sweat beading up on his forehead.

Then it hits me. It’s Samantha Bee from The Daily Show.

So I went up to her and said “Hey, sorry about that. I was staring for a little there because I thought I recognized you from college somewhere, and then realized that I know your face from TV. And I actually really like your work.” I do, too.

My mom and I watch the Daily Show together whenever we can, and we laugh hard at Samantha Bee’s stuff.

She said “Oh, that’s really sweet, thanks! Hey, do you want to be in a bit for the show?”

Duh.

So there’s a chance – a slim chance – that I’ll be in a montage of man-on-the-street interviews on the Daily Show tonight.

I find that if I keep my dreams small enough, they can come true a lot more often.

**UPDATE**
I watched last night – didn’t make the cut. So it goes.

Union Hall 4816

Originally uploaded by Shameel Arafin

Those of us that have blogging access and an itch to get up on a stage here at And I Am Not Lying (Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman, and me, Jeff Simmermon) are putting on another live show with some pretty exciting talented friends at Union Hall on Sunday, August 28th. The doors are at 7:30 PM, show starts at 8.

You’ll see storytelling from Brad and I, both folks who have been in a few Moth Grand SLAMS – Brad even won a few. I had a story on This American Life two years ago, and I don’t mind flogging that fading moment of glory a little longer. Cyndi’s a fantastic and accomplished storyteller and burlesque performer, and she’s coming off of a run of her one-woman show “Wonder Woman: A How To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.”

I’m exceptionally thrilled to announce that we’ll have a burlesque performance from Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas. I can honestly say that I’ve never, ever seen anything on a stage like the duet they’ll be doing, an interpretation in dance and song that perfectly sums up my love/hate relationship with the South.

This is an entirely different (and completely NSFW) duet that they’ve performed before. It’s kind of a stylistic marriage between this and this.

We’ll also have a visit from Adam, The First Real Man — an accomplished sword swallower and performer of various feats of strength, along with a comedian who’s yet to be determined.

At one point, this thing was meant to be a live version of this blog. But really, let’s be honest about things here — posting’s been a little slack for the past few months, and we might all be okay with that.

As David pointed out to me the other day, it’s not really a live version of the blog. It’s just a good show.

Basically, I find that I spend a LOT of my time hunched in front of a glowing rectangle, breathing shallowly through my mouth. Lately, I’ve been performing more, working on a book project too. After all day in front of a computer, I just want to FEEL something and experience a connection with other human beings that reminds me that I’m alive.

When I do post here, that’s usually what’s driving that — FEELING something. And we’re putting on a show that’s designed to pack the maximum amount of sensation and excitement into the shortest time possible. We’ve all got a short time here, and I’m trying to keep as many people from going completely numb for as long as possible.

Hope you can join us.

Just to re-cap, the show is:

And I Am Not Lying
Sunday, August 28th
at Union Hall (702 Union St, Brooklyn)
doors at 7:30, show at 8
$10 at the door

Featuring

Brad Lawrence
Cyndi Freeman
Adam, The First Real Man
Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas
Jeff Simmermon
special guest TBD

Here’s a poster: