The Green Monster

Today I violated a major life rule: do not freak out and obsessively stalk someone younger than you when you get defensive about your career and someone in the business mentions her name. Facebook will not make any of this better, no matter how far yoygo back on her wall feed.

Very rarely do people get under my skin and send me cater wheeling down this path which can only end in pitty party.

Actor jealousy is a dangerous beast, one which I tend to successfully avoid, and one that slapped me freakin hard in the freakin face today. Trying to stay positive about a role for an extended period of time is exhausting, and sometimes having everything in your life go well only serves as a remind that things could be going very well.

Sigh. What would Kristen Chenowith do? Throw her down the goddamn stairs, that's what.

Show twenty eight was God Tastes Like Chicken. Always a fun show, and I adore the host...

Seriously? Why was my manager asking me about this girl? What does she even see in her? She's so smily and musical theatre and annoying.

Twenty nine was Naked Stand Up, which honestly hasn't been fun since it moved from The PIT to Queens, though it was the very show that added the brine to the pickle of a challenge in which I find myself now.

Thirty was back at teneleven bar, though I skipped out on the 10 o'clock mic at The PIT because of my callback situation.

Hear that, little miss born in 1985. I got a callback. I do things. I am going somewhere.

Ok. Letting it go. There is enough success in the universe for all of us. No need to be fatty.

Also, my girlfriend is way hotter than hers. And she has a back yard. In manhattan. Suck it.

Putting the Rage in Time Arranging... Because management doesn't have enough rage in it.

With an eight show deficit forty seven days into the challenge and the realization that the rest of my life is not about to sit, heel, stay while I go on about my challenge, I had hoped to double dip tonight and do a mic before my regular Monday show.

And then I spaced out and got on the wrong train. I left my house late due to the need to fix a costume for tonight and walk the dog which is not mine, but whose mother left him with me over four months ago and appears to have no intention of retrieving him, so the looking at my feet to ponder my life space out cost me the only precious 15 minutes of a prayer I had to make it to the mic on time, and even then it would be a mad dash, and I woul dmot likely have had to dash out early to make my 8:00 rendezvous with a group of producer who want to pitch a reality show about five up and coming NY comedians, one of them being yours truly. I ended up in Union Square when I had my sights set on the West Village, and rather than show up late, again, which I think is tacky and also I do it all the time and have ladled the last few drops out of my well of "sorry I'm late" excuses, so I jumped ship and, in a wave of almost tears (the dog thing is actually an extremely big issue right now. He is the most beautiful 80 pound commitment I never asked for, and, try as I might, I cannot be a single mom. His mom is on an express train to crazy town, however, so it is a source of much hemming and hawing) I decided to skip the mic and call my mom. And then I cried on the street in front of Barnes and Noble. Perhaps Borders would have been more appropriate, but there were none in sight.

And then I called my dear friend who lives out of town and almost cried again.

And then I felt better.

So no double dipping tonight, but I do have my late show, which I since.

Being kind to yourself can be a bit of a unicorn in this business. Well, not a unicorn, because I do think it exists, but you hear a lot more about it than you actually see people riding them off into the sunset--the unicorn of loving yourself and giving yourself a break when you need it most, being kind but motivated, and not holding it against yourself that you made a costume today rather than work on jokes or get into the city on time.

I am still working on forgiveness. Today was a gloomy day.

Anyone on the market for an 80 pound pit bull who hates cats and loves people? Tomorrow is another day. A day with auditions, photoshoots, and hopefully more than one stand up set for this little kitten. Get it? Kitten?

Holy Bunny, Batman.

Um... Excuse me, but where the fuck was I when it was announced that today is Easter? Was there an extremely loud train that galavanted through the city and I missed it, or did it sneak up quietly and other people are on the same boat as I am in saying, holy shit. Easter already? Who knew?

Train or the boat, people.

Point is, no open mics tonight because none of my regular dives were open due to som serious bunny love, (the holiday, not the person, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, what are you doing in this city besides being overcharged for rent) a fact which was only brought to my attention because of a planned revival of a certain musical baesd on a cult movie classic eponymous for a blood stained prom queen, and my being called in for the role of high school bully (the lines roll surprisingly naturally off the tongue... "my dad's a lawyer. He will sue your ass," among others...) who collects the blood and orchestrates the consequent soaking. 27 and I'm finally being taken seriously as a 17 year old.

I was under the incorrect impression that this was a world premier, so when they sent me original sheet music to prepare, I had a mini panic attack and lied to my manager.

"You do know how to read music, don't you, Scout?"

"Do I know how to read sheet music!" I responded, channeling my best Barbara Streisand channeling her best Fanny Brice.

The truth is, I read sheet music with the same dexterity that Helen Keller learned the word "water." Sure, she figured it out eventually, but it took a lot of hand holding to get there. So, in a panic, I went to arrange a practice session with an accompanist, which led to the realization that no one will work on Easter Sunday, followed by a consequent googling storm, followed by a big motherfucking sigh of relief when I found a very muddy recording of a 2010 reading on YouTube that was at least intelligible enough for me to learn my 32 bars. And then I drank mimosas in the park.

Thanks, for dying, Jesus. From one lapsed Jew to another. (To be fair, mom raised us Catholic. Dad's people were the chosen ones, and my mom chose to ignore their eight days of light and other evenings of whimsy, and parked our Midwestern fannies twice a year--Ester being one of those biannual body of Christ bonanzas--at an Anglican Church... aka Diet Catholic, or as they say in Europe, Catholic Light.)

One year I forgot about Christmas. Man, that flight was expensive.

Paying Rent

Ok, so right about now is where my callbacks for the off-Broadway show begin, so shows are going to get a bit sporadic. Audition round one was March 18th. Pepper in callbacks until we get to round four on  April 18th, and we just found out the final round will be just shy of a month after that. What that means is that sleep is the most important thing in the world for me. Sleep has a crazy imapct on the voice of a chanteusse, as the as the life of a comic tends to err towards the nocturnal, the 365 in 365 challenge plus said audition schedule came to a head in many a high school debate worthy session of cost/benefit analysis. The Q train shuttle didn't help either. 

I should also mention the emotional stakes at hand.  The night before I received my first callback for said role of a lifetime was a Monday, and Monday means one thing: TAKIN OFF THE RITZ! My weekly burlesque extravaganza. The show went less than well. We were involved with an epic battle with a fellow who is part of the cast of The Aubrey Show and deemed my venue the place where he absolutely needed to watch it, my show be damned, we can start after. Now, I struggle with confrontation (hush, Exes who care to argue with that.  I could only confront you because I LOVED you. Obvi. I can't yell at strangers, only people I care about enough that I am apt to push them away.) so it was a night of constant negotiation between diva gay boy on shitty reality TV show, a diva performer on my own line up who shall remain nameless, but was pissy about our delayed start time, my best friend (also a performer) whose well intended advice was in no short supply, and a bartender who was a-ok Bennedict Arnold-ing either way, depending on which party contributed most generously to her bar ring. 

The night ended in full meltdown on my part, counting out money in a heap of glitter and my own legs dreaming of something more. Perhaps a case of "the grass is always greener," or perhaps just a symptom of wanting something so far out of my control. It wasn't PMS, though. I checked. Still, no drought of emotion on my part. 

The next day I went back to the Port Authority show. The host was kind and let me go at the top of the line up, so I could dash away to Nurse Bettie for burlesque at 10pm. All in all a solid if not un-remarkable set, though it did shed even further light on my time management skills and wondered if part of my problem as a comic is lack of consistency. I can try to make a mic every week, but the ability to have a consistent schedule and build a community around one mic every week is not a luxury my lifestyle easily affords. 

Thursday was off to Noah Levine's mic and the remind that being 15-20 minutes earlier at the beginning of a mic for the sign up process can save a hour or more of listening to all the other comics and drawing mermaids in my notebook time. Again, time management. Damn you, 24 hour days. 

Twenty-two was a bit of a cheat. Doc Wasabassco (seriously, always puts a great show together) started a new monthly at Waystation, and I thought I could commandeer the audience into listening to jokes before they saw my boobs. They were definitely more interested in my boobs, so a big B+ for my B cups.

Twenty three was with Sassi at Broadway Comedy Club, which is also the home of my stand-up debut! It was the year I graduated college, a bringer show, and I thought it would launch me into superstadom overnight. I was an idiot. Also annoying. Most pretty women go through an annoying phase at some point in their life. Mine was my early 20's.

Twenty four came in the form of one of my favorite shows in the city, because despite being one of the most bizarre and unpredictable audiences ever, it is one of the few shows that can truly claim variety, and that show is Floating Kabarette at Galapagos Art Space... No, that's Public Asembaly/ Old Galapagos. New Galapagos moved to Dumbo. Yes, Dumbo. Uh-huh, you sure will get lost on beautiful cobblestone streets as you try to find it, but if you hit a deli called Peas and Pickles staffed by middle eastern men in patterened sweaters, you know you're going the right way. Also, try the Cajun Mix. I adore it, and if you go late enough at night, there may be some sort of super religious radio station playing and, if you are a lady, the man behind the counter will ring you up without making eye contact and will put your change on the counter rather than run the risk of touching your bare hand. I like to deal with it in the same way that I deal with Hassidic people... by trying to touch their hand, making eye contact, and saying thank you extremely loudly as if I were, oh, I don't know, a human being rather than a vessal for sin. Glitter is my gdd, motherfucker.

I should also say that Kabarette is the site of the only instance in which I have actually had someone  walk out on my set out of principle. It was a group of European men (think "Legally Blond" Gay or European, not "I own a yhat and have an accent so slick and a body so gracefully ripe with sinew that even a devout lesbian like Scout will flirt with me, until she realizes that you have tufts of pubic style, but slightly thinner hair where your breasts should be, and even if we do make it into bed together, I will spend most of the time pawing at your chest and having the disapointing realization over and over again that you are a gross man, and not a lovely lady) and my mention of my period was what did them in. I have a song dedicated to the matter. A sing along. It is usually such a crowd pleaser. Perhaps they went to Peas and Pickles and discussed poor fashion choices and a general distaste for women and bodily functions with the hands-off fellow who sells me Cajun Mix for my late night train ride home from the cobble stoned streets of Dumbo to the sea of abandoned Carribean food in the park that is where I reside: a place so deep in the bowels of Brooklyn that late nights and weekends, sometimes the trains don't even go there.

Or if they do, they shuttle.

We Will Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming Shortly

Life does not rain, it pours, and in the grand tradition of the energy patterns of the universe, my 365 in 365 challenge happened to coincide with my being put on an audition track for one of those "I'll be damned if this wasn't the part I was born to play" roles, which for me, means the role of a certain below 14th St. lesbian performance art in a certain Alphabet City musical that rocked Broadway at exactly the same time that every hormone, dream, ambition, and quarter note I had to sing in my body rocked me. The audition process has been long and, well, oddly predictable: go sing, freak out, wait, get a call, freak out, find out the call was good news, freak out, prepare, go sing... four rounds of this we've had so far. The end is near, but my nerves are shot.

All of this has brought up the very question that may have been at the hart of this battle from the get go, which is, am I even a comic to begin with?

Stand Up is a bizarrely unique pinkie finger on the hand of the performance world. Comedians all at once have all and none of the power over their own career. So much of being a comedian seems to be just, well, being a comedian: hanging out with, spending your nights with, thinking like, talking like, being just the same as all the other, but better than all the other, comedians. Comedy Central Specials fall like errant bombs rewarding those most deserving and also those most, "what the fuck, you're kidding me" of the crew. We tumble though careers of which we portend to be the masters, but are really as much prey to whim and whimsy as all the other pretty schmucks who spend their days waiting for auditions and their nights being fabulously glamorous working coat check. None of us have any idea what is coming for us next, and wanting something is easily the first step towards a mental breakdown.

I took that first step in showing up for an open call. My amazing manager couldn't secure a private audition, so I was forced to accompany all the other NYU ne'er do wells for 4 hour wait in line for an open call that has, four rounds later, brought me so close to the prize that my heart is sore from trying to pretend things will be ok if I don't book it.

Top it off with the whipped cream of a new love, and it is no shock that today, I fell apart. I left round four with a lucky egg in my hand (a green stone that was given to me by Nasty Canasta at the start of the year. Egg for luck, she said. I took it quite literally) and helped a blind man named Joe cross the street and find his bus terminal at Port Authority. "Can I hold your hand?" he asked. His eyes were foggy with chaticacts. I told my intimate lady partner I would call her back and walked hand in hand with Joe to make our way up two escalators ("I'm not afraid of these things," he said. "They still freak me out sometimes," I replied") to gate 307 where he told me to thank my mom for raising  me right, and I secretly felt guilty for clutching my egg closer and praying for the karma to translate to the creative team at my audition just minutes prior.

What I am trying to say is that I have no fucking idea if I want to be a comedian. I know I want to be a performer. I know I want to write and make people laugh. I know that recently I have been smashed in the face with a kind of love that I had previously retired as even a possibility in the life of a performer.

As much as I don't want to care. As much as I hope that I am stronger than... above... will persevere no matter what... I want this part. I want a job where I get to clock in and clock out, even if it is only clocking out to sleep. I want something that is beyond my control of wanting, and it is killing me.

I cried today and took a nap. I had thought I would be able to go home after my audition and write, run errands, prepare for my weekly show this evening. Nope. Tears. I needed to cry and release to the universe the painful, uncomfortable, humbling truth that I want something so badly, I am totally venerable, without defense, open...

And then we pick ourselves up, are thankful for the lady who helps kiss away the tears (don't vomit in your mouth. I was bitter for a long time. It is my turn to be happy) and fucking blog. Will I make it to the early mic tonight? Nope. Has my stomach been stable enough to manage to consume solid foods yet today? Nope. Am I sure of anything in my career except for that I want things, performance things, I want this part, will not die if I do not get this part, but mostly believe why wouldn't they give me this part? want it so badly I require nine hours of sleep a night and sporadic mental breakdowns and spontanious egg-in-hand mid-street prayer sessions... yes.

My girlfriend asked me how it went. Do I need anything? I responded that I wanted a mojito (no idea where that came from.) She met me at the subway with a deli rose and told me it was ok to cry if I needed to. I needed to. Eventually, I fell asleep--at her house, not at the restaurant. I'm a woman of whimsy, not a crazy homeless person. "I should have done work today," I said. "You cried your eyes out today. You needed a nap," she said.

So, I'm behind on my open mics. I have been napping. It could be worse. I could be Mario Lopez. Everything always works out in the end. If it doesn't work out, it isn't the end.

Fuck You, Gluten

Just paid $9 for well vodka in a room filled with $3PBR's.

Next time, gluten intolerance be damned.

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" or Bust

Twenty and twenty one came together like a group of hookers at a rugby team orgy. Up to the Upper West Side (seriously, that area between 14th street and midtown freaks me out. What goes on there except that spot by UCB that has tater tots and my Charles who lives in the tiniest studio in the world? Midtown, I know, due to an affinity for large, shiny lights and Broadway shows... though if I have to walk through an ocean of nose-pierced, Manic Panic late tweens/early twentysomething out of towners waiting for the lottery for "American Idiot," I may start carrying a brick in my shoulder bag, and I haven't been above Lincoln Center since I dated a woman In The Heights. Fair to say the musical was more fun than the commute) to the P&G for three rounds of 2 minutes each in a weird, speed dating for comics set up, which I eventually dug, once I figured out what was going on. 

Then I received a tip about a mic behind Port Authority and planned to meet up with my partner in spacy-ness, Chanelle Futrell. (we used to do a little Scout and Chanelle Show on youtube, which we plan to resurrect... eventually...) En route, I received a text from my new found lady which, in fine tribute to her skill as a wordsmith, read, "just leaving a convention in Midtown. Wanna make out in the bathroom at Starbucks?" to which, I said, "duh." So there we stood like patiently apprehensive late tweens/early twentysomethings waiting in line for the lottery for "American Idiot" and made out in the bathroom at Starbucks, careful not to touch any of our important parts to any exposed bathroom surfaces. It was awesome.

The mic wasn't bad either, until a drunk fella who was obnoxious in a way that is inexplicable without going on a full rant, which I just don't have in me right now, did a set that was every kind of racist no comedian wants to be. Political in-correctness may be all the rage, but racism is still exists, and just because you can laugh at your own internalized issues, doesn't mean for real racist and comedian are mutually exclusive. Sure, back when I really was a nose pierced, Manic Panic twentysomething and thought I was Sarah Silverman, I tried my hand at a couple of race jokes that didn't land, but I backed off. I knew when to quit. I looked like a bad comedian, not an asshole. This fella with a questionable hair situation and one too many vodka sodas was asshole all the way.

I lightened the mood with a rant about bedbugs, which are the only group of anything that I want gassed, beaten, hung, machettied, or however else racist people kill things. Those bugs are insidious, and I hate them.

Which leads me to my next point, being mean is only funny when it is lighthearted and not serious and you can do almost anything with a genuine smile. I may not be the best joke writer there is, but I am a generally happy person, and sometimes just going up on stage with energy and a smile is enough to save the day.

The "Oh My God I Want to Kill Myself" In Open Mics

Show seventeen was my weekly beast of burden, Takin Off the Ritz, which happens every Monday at The Ritz (gay bar, not douche bag hotel) around 10. Free show, so come by if you're not an asshole. The crowd shifts between mostly lezzies to mostly gay boys depending on the night, and I will say that hipsters, gay boys and lesbians are the trickiest audiences I have found thus far. My success in front of them all depends on how willing they are to make fun of themselves, which varies between very willing to make fun of their cold irony/bitchiness/love of hummus (respectively) to being coldly ironic, bitchy or loving hummus respectively.

Eighteen and nineteen double whammed on Tuesday with Big Mike and Friends at The Boxcar Lounge and Penny's Open Mic, both repeat offenders, and both epicly long, which brings me to my next point, sitting through all these open mics may well be the death of moi. There is a code of conduct at open mics, adherence to which is inversely proportionate to your level of street cred fame. The bigger you are, the easier it is to bend the rules.

Comics stay poor much longer than other artists, as even when you have sort of made it, you still probably need a writing job or a Cablevision commercial here and there to be able to comfortable afford that one bedroom in hell's kitchen I've heard so much about. And even the big guys still have to work out new material somewhere, so it isn't uncommon to see performers you think should be way out of your league jump on a line up of a mediocre show at a decent club, or following that logic, to see comics who are about to break into the "big time" of $40 primetime spots at the Chuckle Hut working it out in the backs of bars at lowly open mics. If fellas such as these fail to meet the one drink minimum or duck out before the end of the reserve list to hit the next spot, or, I don't know, go home, smoke pot and masturbate (which, from what I can gather, is the bulk of what successful comics do) it is less of a social transgression than if I, an up and commer who must rely on befriending people and being known as a good person for booking unpaid spots on other people's line ups, were to follow suit and ship out.

Translation: I have to sit and be cordial through all the performers at all the mics. On this particular night, the amount of time that required was a synonym of epic that I am too exhausted to think of at the moment, because my brain is fried from too many hours at open mics. It isn't anybody's fault. That's the open mic lay of the land. Go. Be nice. Listen. Have whatever beer is on special (unless you share my gluten intolerance, in which case you go for a vodka soda and curse the penny pinching bags of douche who get away with $3 PBR's night after night) and listen to every Tom, Dick and Harry tell jokes about his hairy dick and Tom Catting ways.

Point! Wordplay!

Time management is beginning to become more and more of an issue. Sure, I can get up there and tell some jokes, and maybe some of them are funny and maybe some of them need to go back up on the chalkboard of ideas for a bit until they find their feet, but the sheer hours of just sitting there, waiting for 135lb unshaven peach fuzz comedians to reach the "blowjob" climax of their jokes--by which I mean the word "blowjob" is actually their punchline. I would say this happens an average of two to three times per open mic--will surely do me in.

Nothing is more deadly for an ADD-lady than boredom. Suck my soul out with one reaction-less audience after another, but please, God, do not end my life in the back of a bar somewhere in alphabet city with a whimper.

Perhaps I am being dramatic. Perhaps I am hitting a wall. Perhaps I should hit my head against a wall just to mix things up.

Either way, thank you and GOODNIGHT!

A False Sense of Pessimism

Here's a joke that hasn't been funny since I was on A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila--I was the first person eliminated. It was awful. I didn't get along with the producers and am fully ashamed that I was ever on the show--But still! This used to be a funny joke:

"So I guess I'll just have to get famous the old fashioned way. Oral sex. It used to be just a dream that a lesbian could sleep her way to the top. Now it's a reality TV show."

I think I can salvage it. Maybe I'll give it a whirl tonight.

Show fourteen was one of those shows where if I didn't know I was going to go home and blog about it, it would have been uzi-to-the-crotch soul-killing. Hello, Laugh Lounge! The host didn't show, so the six of us passed the mic and took solace in the brutal honesty of the situation. There was no running the light. More of an, "ok, I have two bits I want to work on tonight. Here they are," type of thing. A solidarity in knowing we had paid $6 for a soda and were in a dark basement on a rainy day just trying to do our thang. And the cocktail menu had me in stitches! Essex in the City! Good one.

I skipped Friday for a burlesque show in Philly where I officially lost my crush on the 22 year old who obviously had never dated in the real world before, and performed at a lesbian bar that was full of women in vests and featured a carpeted floor. Who carpets a bar? (Insert lesbian carpet joke here.)

Show fifteen was teneleven bar, where the mic just recently moved from 8pm to 6:30. I was late, and the room was a little bit weird, though welcoming, and happy hour brought me a $3 vodka/soda and the bartender a $2 tip. Hey, big spender.

Because the audience was pretty thin, one of the comics took it upon himself to pick me out of the crowd (because crowd work makes so much sense at an open mic. HBO special, here you come) and ask me, "would you ever date a black man?" with an obvious race card in his deck that he was itching to play.

"Nope. Never." I replied. "I don't date men at all. I'm gay." Ha! Let them think I am racist and then switch it up at the end. Gay rights, touche!

I should have know better than to think that revealing my lesbian-ism is ever a deterant for men. I know, from experience that it is more of an invitation for sexual comments, personal questions, and an eventual offer to shave close and go down. (Men, take note. If you think you have a chance of bagging a minxy mo, at least come up with something more original than oral sex. We do other things, you know. Like scissor, cuddle, and talk about our feelings.) His rant against me ended with a question about my lover's breasts--please note, I did not have a lover at the time, nor did I ever imply that I did. This girlfriend to which he was referring was a product of his imagination, entirely.

"Does she have watch batteries or funbags?" He asked, employing possibly the most random point of reference for breast size that I have ever heard.

I didn't answer. Watch batteries? What is he, hitting on anamatronics at FAO Schwartz? Whose breasts look like watch batteries? The least he could have done was make a AA battery joke. Something.

I did have the pleasure of running into Sasheer Zamata (sasheer.com) who took me along to The PIT's mic at 10pm. Though my name did not make it out of the hat for one of the six open spots, all around good guy Rob Stern (http://passthecarrots.podbean.com) tacked me onto the end, anyhoo, so I ended the night with a smile and a slight wine buzz. Even though the Q train was shuttling. Freakin, always.

Oops, I did it again

For any of you who may be keeping track out there, you may have noticed that we are a little bit behind right now, both in shows and in blogs.

I can explain.

You see, there comes a time in every little lesbian's life where she falls madly in love with a woman who has strong arms and an amazing blond ponytail, and since the original lady in question has a natural tendency towards procrastination in the first place, and the woman with whom she is now in love works from home, and therefore has a flexible schedule, even though it's too soon to say that they are girlfriends, they are ok referencing each other as "intimate lady friends," and sometimes the first lady forgets to blog and has trouble focusing and, instead, spends the precious couple of freetime-hours she gets every week going on doggie dates, ordering vegetarian Chinese food, and discussing the possibilities of taking the Bolt Bus to Canada and eloping.

Does it help my career? Nope. But if we spend enough time together, it will help me regulate my period.

Still! The industry waits for no one, so after a brief week and change on the Island of Lesbos, I'm back and gearing up for a blog blitz.

Hold on, breeders. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Everything below 14th St

Knowing that I had fallen somewhat behind on my days to mics ratio, I had every intention of doubling up on Sunday. Having already expressed my feelings on the subject of time management, it shall come as no surprise that I did not, in fact, make the early mic I had hoped to attend, and instead went directly to Alter Ego, hosted by Killer Killy Dwyer the third Sunday of every month at Fontana's.

A regular on the line up, this is one of the few occasions where I do stand up and take my clothes off at different times in the same show. I is a difficult balance to strike, I must say, and the order is extremely important. Once an audience has seen you wearing nothing but sparkly things and a smile, it is difficult to convince them to want to hear you speak, though, when pressed, I can occasional combat this syndrome with the line, "the only thing more intimidating than a naked woman is a naked woman who talks." That's not just good comedy. It is the fuckin truth.

Lucky number thirteen was the relaunch of my weekly Monday show, Takin off the Ritz,which happened to coincide with the launch of "All About Aubrey," a reality show about someone named Aubrey. Reality shows are launched all the time without my being aware of it. I didn't think this beacon of a waste of time and brain cells would be any different. I was wrong.

In the grand history of bars double booking and mis communication in the service industry, my show was delayed an hour so that a fella on the show could watch himself have his 2.2 seconds of fame. All time low...definitely for me, and possibly also for humanity.

Try as I might to keep my "oh no you din't" in my head and off the stage, that shit was bananas, and though friends swore they couldn't tell, I had a sneaking feeling that I, temporarily, lost my funny.

I should also mention that right around then I was going through a casting process for a certain off-Broadway revival of a certain show that took place in a certain alphabet city in a certain early 90's, and I wanted the part so badly it felt like my eyeballs were bleeding. Why that has anything to do with wanting a part, is yet to be determined, but that's how I felt. Not just because I wanted the role, but because ever since I got really close to a steady gig last June (hosting a silly, pop culture news show on MTV. I lost in the final four, which was closed enough to make me believe there may, indeed, be a light at the end of the tunnel,) I have been desperate for the ability to make performing my job. Not my constant hustle, low balance alert, $70 cash in an envelope at the end of the night job, but my eight shows a week, pennies I nthe penny jar job.

Wanting things badly is the hardest part.

In a wave of drama, I swore off burlesque in the green room that night. It was, of course, a lie, but the more I glimpse what else is out there, the more I wish I were a part of it. That said, burlesque and cabaret are my life. I don't think I could ever live anywhere without them, and I would not be a fraction of the performer--wait. That doesn't make sense--I would be a very small fraction of the performer that I am today without everything that world below 14th St has given me.

In the words of a McDonalds drive through employee that my ex used to quote, "I is conflicted."