Here’s a video of Chris doing part of his act:

AS always, the show is the first Tuesday of each month at Union Hall in Brooklyn, 8PM.

Tickets are ten bucks, available here.

Visit the larger announcement for more information – hope you can make it.

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.

He was kind enough to let me share this video of his set:

The guy’s good, huh? You can catch him on Twitter at @chethinks, and on Tumblr here.

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.

And like, every million years a giant hand yanks the ship away and rips the planet apart, shaking everyone off to drift into their deaths in the cold wilds of the outer atmosphere.

In case you were wondering, I was, in fact, late to my destination. And yes, I do find psychedelic drugs to be redundant. Enjoy the pics:

psychedelic stand‐up show … a visceral experience from the downtown comedy underground. Accomplished thinkers, authors, poets, and artists join Barris and his band to become one seamless, improvised comedy freak show.”

I caught the sold-out show at Union Hall last Saturday. What I could see of it was really, really awesome, when I could see around a pillar. Everything sounded great, though.

Reggie Watts dropped in at the last minute and did a hilarious set, improvising all kinds of hilarious music and completely surreal standup that made perfect sense and told right-on truths as long as you didn’t listen too closely. If you did, you’d realize he was riffing on the kind of played-out onstage cliches you hear from most hip-hop and rock ‘n roll stage banter.

Here’s a pretty sweet clip. In it, Reggie Watts covers Maroon 5′s “Moves Like Jagger,” freestyles and improvises, and raps like the lead singer of a Cookie Monster death metal band:

Reggie Watts – Touching Songs Improv – Heart Of Darkness – 1.7.12 from Karmalize Productions on Vimeo.

In this clip, Reggie, Greg Barris and the Forgiveness improve a long jam about slack friends, vampires, teen smoking and more:

Reggie Watts & The Forgiveness – Improv Jam – Heart Of Darkness – 1.7.12 from Karmalize Productions on Vimeo.

Both clips were shot and edited by Alex Gaylon of Karmalize Productions.

We had to have her put to sleep today. She was sixteen or seventeen – when you get a dog from the pound, their age is always sort of vague. She had rheumatoid arthritis in her back legs and a dense, growing mass in the bone of her right front leg. Her right front paw has touched the ground about fifteen times since Thanksgiving. She was deaf and starting to lose her eyesight, and my parents have had to give her morphine to keep the pain back for the last week or so. It was time.

That doesn’t mean this doesn’t completely suck, though.

When we got her from the pound, they told us that she had likely been abused in her previous home, but she didn’t have any behavior problems that they could see. She just cringed when she heard people yelling and got a little weird about dinnertime. When we took her into the isolation pen to sort of test her out or whatever, she climbed into my lap and whimpered and licked my hand. How can you ignore something like that?

Her name on her cage at the pound was Sandy, which is also my mom’s first name. We asked my mom if she wanted us to change the dog’s name, and she knelt to pet her and rub her ears for a minute, looking into her huge brown eyes. Then she stood up and said “you know, I really think she’s been through enough. And if you all talk to me in the same tone of voice you’d talk to a dog, and I can’t tell the difference, we have at least two other problems that are much more important.”

Every single time I entered my parents’ house after that, Sandy exploded all over me like a furry avalanche, thumping her tail and emitting this high-pitched whiny squeal. Her tail would bang into the banister and hit the floor hard enough to hurt, but it never seemed to bother her when I came home. I took her running in the field by my folks’ house, and she kept up with me on the sprints for many years, her face split in a massive dog grin. When we got home she’d drink her entire water bowl, maybe knock back an inch or two of toilet water and then pass out in front of the air conditioner.

Then at night, when I’d finally go to bed, I’d find her lying on whatever bed I was supposed to be staying on. She slept next to me every chance she got. Here she is, last Christmas. She slipped away while Maggie and I were hanging out with my parents by the tree, and helped herself to the end of my bed on the floor of my sister’s old room:

My dad’s eyesight has faded a lot in the last several years, and he can’t drive anymore. He’s in good shape around the house, but outside of that, it can be touch-and-go. Over the last several years, when my mom’s been out running errands, taking care of my grandmother, going to church or whatever else, my dad’s largely been at home in a darkened room.

By choice, but still. Sandy always stayed with him and kept him company, and they got really, really close.

He’s taking this pretty hard.

My dad and I watch a lot of movies together when I’m home. It’s all strictly classic badass canon: Eastwood Westerns, certain Coen Brothers movies like True Grit and No Country for Old Men. Sometimes we would just watch the part in “Witness” where Harrison Ford is dressed like an Amish guy and whips some bullying tourist ass over and over again.

You know the drill. Sandy always joined us. Here’s a photo of a couple of old dogs watching rough frontier justice in what I believe was “The Outlaw Josey Wales”:

Apart from greeting me at the door, hanging out with my Dad and going for walks with my parents, one of Sandy’s other favorite things was to eat fresh corn on the cob:

When I came home for Christmas this year, she still managed to leap up and speed-hobble to the door, whining and thwacking her tail around. She nearly slipped and fell on her face, but she squealed and whined and for a minute there, I thought her legs weren’t so bad. “That’s the fastest she’s moved in months,” my mom said. “She always does this for you, though.”

Sandy never forgot to call us back, forgot anyone’s birthday or showed up half-drunk to a party and perpetrated some bullshit drama she should have outgrown back in college. We never had to make excuses for her, never got disappointed by her, never had to put up with her stupid boyfriends or low self-esteem or periodic flakeouts. She was never late to anything important and never found a cooler group of friends to go hang out with instead of us lame-os who had always been around.

All Sandy asked for was regular exercise, regular food, a chew-bone in the morning and regular patting and belly scratches. And in exchange she gave us her whole life, a tremendous amount of love, loyalty and affection that never diminished and never even flickered for a second. Everything she did, she did consistently, with the same amount of feeling. She gave me that same greeting every time I walked in the door whether I’d been gone for one day or nine months. She never held anything against me. And she couldn’t even tell when I was leaving.

Whenever I left my parents’ place I’d gather my luggage by the front door and get my coat handy before going to the airport. Then I’d find her and get down on the floor to give her a long hug and kiss her just behind her ears. I’ll never forget that scent, or the feeling of that soft angel-white hair against my nose, upper lip and chin.

I’d stroke her ears and beard and say goodbye, and she never had any idea. Not the first time I left, and not the last time I left, right after Christmas, even though I laid there with her for half an hour, until I could finally stop sobbing. I knew this was close for her, and I knew that was it. We don’t always get to say goodbye to the people or animals we love the most.

But that doesn’t make it suck any less when we get a chance to do it, either.

Friends kind of drift as you get older. A lot of my best friends have small kids now, and they’re (understandably) not available like they used to be. Other friends carry their own baggage that gets increasingly more difficult to tolerate. And as time passes, you start to realize that all you have in common with some people is a shared past, and have very, very different ideas of what a good future looks like.

Today, my family did the right thing by the most solid family friend we’ve got – my parents steeled themselves and ended Sandy’s severe suffering. But we lost someone who loved us all for the greatest reasons of all: because we were good to her, and we were simply there and available to receive her considerable love.

Whenever I remember Sandy, I’ll always remember all of this, and one more thing. When she was younger, she used to love to go out into the yard in the evening and look out at the neighborhood. She’d stand on her back legs and balance on her elbows, lifting her nose to smell the delicate scents of the night waking up.

The air would be full of honeysuckle and moonflowers, and she’d catch notes of opossums, neighbor dogs, atoms of who knows what else swirling through the air. Her tail would quiver and she’d just drink in this huge, swirling invisible tapestry, and sometimes let out a few barks just to let that coming darkness know she was there, and she wasn’t scared of anything.

I’ll always remember that about her — curious and alive, standing up against the night. She was fearless and in love with the smells of whatever was coming, and totally at peace with the advancing darkness settling all around her.

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!

Brother, did they ever deliver:

The saxplayer handed me a pretty sweet business card right afterwards, though none of the URLs on it are coming up right now. As near as I can tell, they’re called the Funky Nassau Band, and you can catch them in the subway underneath the Financial District, more or less. They’ve got a ton of stuff on YouTube, too. I especially love this slow jam in a Miami Vice suit.