“Can your dog have a treat?” the PetCo employee asked. I had no idea.
365in365
An NYC based comedian turned burlesquer turned comedian once again on a challenge to do 365 stand up comedy sets in 365 days.
I gave up the cruel world of stand-up for the bedazzles and $50/number of burlesque, until one fateful night and a "win one for the gipper" speech that turned my tides and let me to take a vow to do 365 stand up sets in 365 days.
Will I be lured back into the world of fans and feathers, or will I stay with drink minimums and Comedy Central Specials? Only time will tell.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Adopting A Dog
“Can your dog have a treat?” the PetCo employee asked. I had no idea.
Friday, January 20, 2012
The Beach
I now understand what it means to go to the beach on a day when it is too cold to swim.
Growing up land locked, the concept of a beach held a position of reverence in my mind. Seeing water without being able to see the opposite shore was a bit of a thrill for me all the way through my late teens, whereupon I went through a serious bout of moodiness and the only things I found thrilling were drinking, rugby, and touching boobs. I remember one cool summer afternoon amid the flat a's of rural Minnesota, gazing out over what turned out to be Lake Michigan and thinking that water must go on forever. Apparently, I had never heard of Canada.
I went on to date a number of beach folk, and, I should say, east coast beach folk because I do believe there is a difference. Lovers from Biddiford Pool, Maine to significant others who summered in The Hamptons for whom la playa was never further away than their Nantucket Reds or a glass of iced Chardonnay. Beach for them was less of an adventure and more of a given--a home rather than a destination. It occured to them but not to me that one could go to the beach as you were, sans coolers, towels, sunscreen, volleyballs, mar-gay-ritas. You could just go for a little while and listen, even when it was too cold to swim.
"Why would you go to the beach if you couldn't swim?" I thought. "That's like planning a trip to DisneyWorld during a thunderstorm when all the rides are closed."
I took a meeting yesterday in Santa Monica, which is something I do, and for those of us not so well versed in Los Angeles topography, that means I was right next to the beach. I donned my running shoes and a Jameson hoodie and went for a jog. On the beach. When it was too cold to swim. With the sun about to set.
Halfway through my jog I stopped to sit on a collection of rocks beside gulls and crashing waves and watched the sun go down. I should mention that I have a similar anxiety with sunsets as I do with beaches: a sort of New Year's Eve-esque fear that I'm not making the most of it and everyone else is having a better sunset than I am. I sat on the rocks and thunk. Let thoughts pass through my mind, casually reminding myself that I should really be meditating because I've been meaning to do more of that, sat... nam... but not really even trying very hard to do nothing.
And I watched part of the sunset. No self-imposed pressure to stay until the pink and golden orb broke the horizon, just watching it until I had watched it enough.
I didn't dip my toes into the water. I lingered for as long as I cared to linger, and then I got in my car and drove away.
It wasn't a beach day, it was a day I happened to spend about an hour and a half on a leisurely jog with a little bit of sunset.
Once home, I closed my eyes and gathered in my hands the memories of all my beach days, each one sizable and heavy, adding to the pile this tiny little moment, which, strangely, was enough. All the days I didn't make the trek to Coney Island or to my lover's house in Long Island because it was too far. There was too much expectation. Who has a whole day to waste when there is so much on the line?
But I live next to the beach now. I can go there anytime I want. Even when it is too cold to swim.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Scout on Scout
LS: Yup. Sure am.
SD: Really?
LS: Nope. I actually just took my first job waiting tables in as long as I can remember. Training starts next week.
SD: That sounds depressing.
LS: Meh, not really. I have a couple of new exciting developments coming in, and I feel generally positive about the direction my life is headed. The service job was more because I moved three months earlier than I expected, so I didn't get to save as much money as I had hoped. And out here I'm not doing any cabaret, which was my job in NYC, so it was either find a new job for the next couple of months or live off Ramen and say a nightly prayer to the credit card fairy. I just got some exciting news yesterday, though, so depending on the timing of things, I may only be slinging classic French Bistro fare for a week or so. Life changes fast out here, and having lived as a starving artist in NYC for most of my adult life, I decided it was time to go above 14th St. and get a real haircut for a change, which means having the cash to pay for it. Service job, j'arrive!
SD: No cabaret!?
LS: Not yet, but as I said, there are some exciting projects in the works. I think I needed to totally unplug before I was ready to reboot. I'm rebooted now, have a newfound addiction to coffee, and am ready to rock. There was a lot I needed to let go of, a lot of listening to myself and downloading meditation podcasts, and then listening to the meditation podcasts, which I did. There was some hiking that needed to happen, and a lot of journaling. I talk to my mom way more often than I used to, which is amazing. Man, that woman sure has lived an incredible life, and I feel lucky every day to have her in mine.
SD: Yeah, yeah. Your mom is an angel. We know. More on these new developments. What can you tell us?
LS: Nothing is in the bank just yet, but I just pitched my first project, which is exciting and helpful in building the confidence and skills and confidence in my skills to build towards pitching even bigger projects. Letting things get quiet is a great way to listen to what the universe wants of you, no lies. It's scary when things are quiet in the biz because not working is the ultimate fear of any performer, but there are some amazing lessons to be learned by letting yourself totally check out for a while. Oh! And I have new videos coming out soon, which is great! They involve puppets and my ukulele, which are a few of my favorite things.
SD: Do you ever go a day without quoting "The Sound of Music?"
LS: Sure! There are plenty of musicals to quote. You'd be suprized how often shouting "good morning, Baltimore!" makes perfect sense.
SD: You are quite the wordsmith, Ms. Scoutington.
LS: That's Dr. Princess Lady Scoutington to you, Ms. Durwood. I didn't get a phd in cuddling for people to call me Ms. Yeah, out here they're having me do a lot more writing than I'm used to, and by writing, I mean staring at my computer and wishing I were more clever than I actually am. Just kidding. It's a little writing joke. If you were a writer, you would understand. No, but seriously, writing is a huge lesson in being kind to yourself. You can't force yourself to be hilarious. You have to love yourself and inspire yourself, and work hard and tease the funny out. Alternatively, you can lock yourself in a room with a pot of coffee and a large bottle of cheap red wine, stay up all night and cry for a while. I've gotten good results with that method, too.
SD: You are quite a drinker, eh?
LS: Yes! I am. So much so that I made myself give up drinking for a month to make sure I'm not an alcoholic. I threw up on the plane flying back to LA from NYC before we even took off. Maybe it's because I'm a bad flyer, maybe it's because I was up super late drinking whiskey and playing bocce ball the night before I flew, maybe it was because sometimes I look at my twitter feed and realize that I don't remember tweeting about a third of what I send out, but whatever the reason, I decided, barf-bag in hand that I needed a break. It's all sober for me until February uno!
SD: Do you think you're going to make it?
LS: I already cheated. I had wine with dinner the other night, then a couple of drinks at a bar after to grease up the ol schmooze monster. The next day I woke up with a migraine, so it's back on the wagon for me. On the upside, I am taking a lot of cold and sinus medicine because all this flying has given me a sinus infection, so at least I'm not totally sober.
SD: Wow. That sounds like the makings of a proper celebrity drug addiction if I've ever heard of one. Let us know when the diet pills come out. We'll get your made for TV movie special going for sure!
LS: "Poor Life Choices: The Lady Scoutington Story."
SD: Speaking of poor life choices, how's the love life?
LS: I mailed an extremely important letter to my ex, and am now saying a prayer to the US Postal system that she gets it. Either way, I feel pretty good about things. I'm keeping busy, and I just finished sharkweek.
SD: Wow. Looks like you have nothing but good things ahead of you.
LS: Thanks. I feel good and am just trying to stay positive.
SD: Yeah, but are you famous yet?
LS: I said... I feel good and am just trying to stay positive.
SD: Well, thanks for taking the time for the interview. Best of luck with everything, and you know we always have your back.
LS: Thanks, Scout. Learning to love myself has been a huge lesson, so I appreciate your support.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Killing Puppies
Except for once, during a breakup which effected me with a profundity even I have a difficult time explaining its impact, I've never worried that I was going to die alone, that my tears sprung from a bottomless well of despair, that I would never laugh again, smile at a stranger, catch someone's eye and, eventually, fall in love. It's the little things that get me. Like that driftwood. Man, that would have been a cool project: collecting shells and rocks on the beach--she loves the beach!--amassing trinkets and treasures until we are old and grey, adding them to our never-ending expansion of a mobile, all anchored to that one very special piece of wood she found on our trip to San Diego.
I have to see my ex when I go back to visit New York because she has my coat, which made sense in a world where my first stop from the airport after Papaya Dog would be her bed, which happens to be adjacent to her closet and my coat. It is significantly less convenient in a world where that closet is a half an hour train ride from my old apartment in Brooklyn where I will be crashing on my old couch while my roommates are on tour.
"Well, I better make plans to get that coat. It was such a find at that flea market," I think. "Silly to waste a great coat like that. And Los Angeles is so sunny, it seems practically criminal to go out and get a whole new coat." So I ask my ex if she'd like to grab coffee,and could she please bring the coat with her. I should just swing by when she is at work, grab the coat and leave her spare keys (whose real estate I've already assessed on my key chain and decided they need to go, immediately, post haste! I'd mail them now, but what about the coat) but if I go to her apartment, I'll have to see the dog. which may be too much for me to bear. I loved that dog. I'm not sure I'd make it through saying good-bye.
I can let go of the thought of our marriage, but am deeply saddened to think that we'll never have the wedding we planned, with aerialists, and my dear friend Bonnie serenading us for our first married people dance--seating scary uncle dick next to evil mother-in-law Nancy. Those tiny lost fractions of moments are what upset me.
At least every hour, I think about calling her and casually asking that she please not use the pillow that I made for her, as it was made with love, and, given the circumstances, is no longer appropriate.
I have a theory about all of this. I call it "killing puppies." The basic premise is this: if we see a movie where a puppy is killed, brutally or otherwise, we cry. It's horrible. Yet, we sit through movies like "Saving Private Ryan" or "Natural Born Killers," and we're ok. We're not happy about it. Maybe we're upset or intellectually provoked, but we're not sad like when the puppy died. My theory is that we can't process multiple human deaths at once--it's just too much, so it washes over us a bit more generally, whereas the puppy is just big enough of a tragedy that it gets through the little door in our hearts and makes us cry.
The same theory predicts that when I go through a break up with someone with whom I had thought I would spend the rest of my life, the things that upsets me most are driftwood, keys and a pillow. The thought that the relationship as a whole is over is too big a concept to permeate whatever gizmo it is inside of me that makes me sad. It's why, the last time heartbreak struck, I lost weight from crying so hard over the scent of her hair.
"So we beat on," I tell myself, "boats against the current, we are borne back into the past." Maybe I'll never make that mobile or marry a woman who makes killer turkey tacos, but I have to believe that somewhere, an even greater adventure lies ahead: one where the puppy lives, and all the people do, too.
Ah-ooo!
Monday, December 12, 2011
It Can't Rain All the Time
My on-again-off-again was happily on. Despite 3,000 miles between us, we had regular plans to see each other and were generally happy and in love, my room covered in post-its she left with sweet nothings of encouragement ("you're pretty talented and you're going to make it," a playful take on what I had requested, which was "you're pretty, talented and you're going to make it," may we never underestimate the importance of punctuation.) She, adorned with a bracelet that bearing the engravement "future wife." Sure, highs and lows abound, but as far as either of us were concerned, this was a relationship of matrimonial caliber. We met family, friends, and referred to each other with the rather uncreative moniker "wife."
On Saturday I was feeling particularly lovesick, still adjusting to a new life in Los Angeles, missing my friends and, on that day in particular, my wife.
iPhone, please play back the transcript:
"Miss you too babe. No sad, life is great," she said. "See you in 10 days."
"19 days," I corrected.
Followed by "Oops. Right. Damn."
And then a series of four un-recriprocated texts sent by me over the course of the next 36 hours ranging from exciting news about a show I've been working on, to an advisory that my feelings were being seriously affected by this radio silence.
Nothing.
Then an apology, she'd been partying all weekend and was, thus, unable to text me. Then a brief phone call, where she whispered she was unable to speak, as she had friends over.
Then emails sent from each of us simultaneously (within a minute) explaining all the reasons we should just be friends.
So, to recap, "I love you, I miss you," 36 hours of silence, and a break up.
Certainly not the series of events I had hoped for. What followed was a teary phone call to my mother who immediately agreed that no one should be mean to me like that, that she was not the woman for me, that mama loves me always, always, and to never be afraid of crying.
Then a commercial audition for Dish TV, where I was chipper and professional--I told you, the universe is a bitch.
A walk to the liquor store for a mediocre bottle of wine, which I am drinking with ice in it, because I am a lady.
A couple of short, confusing, emails, a friend sending me a link to an apartment in his building that would be perfect for my girlfriend and I because he knows we've been looking for a two bedroom and how much she loves Santa Monica, a perfunctory look at match.com, just in case, and a cold CocaCola, which always somehow seems to cure what ails me.
My manager called me when I found out to make sure I was ok, if I needed popcorn and a movie, but I have a show tonight, and if there is one lesson with which the universe and I are in perfect accord, it is that the show must go on.
On Saturday, I missed my girlfriend terribly. On Sunday, my girlfriend was terrible, and today, the sky is a perfect pathetic fallacy of the tears falling down my face. I will never pretend that I understand the way the world works. I continue to wonder at what point my ex decided it was over, and at what point I, too, resigned that it was. Certainly, there must have been a place before those 36 hours of silence where one of us knew we were approaching a point of no return--that a refusal to send a "busy, love! Talk tomorrow!" was becoming a matter of la grande vie and le petit mort.
And now here I am, wine in hand, Pandora carefully curated to walk me through this crisis. It may be rainy and sad today, but let it not go unnoticed that I live in a world where nine days out of ten there is sun: metaphorically, that world is a lot of meditation, journaling and positive thinking. Literally, it is Los Angeles.
My roommate offered an unsolicited and entirely unhelpful opinion, and surely there will be more of those to come, but that's life. Timing is everything.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Are you there, facebook? It's me, DoctorPrincess LadyScoutington
"I'm sorry, your bags are overweight. I'm going to have to ask you to..."
And I would say, "Ma'am. Ma'am. Let me stop you right there. I just gave away all of my worldly posessions, shy of my hopes and dreams. How much do your hopes and dreams weigh? More than 50lbs?"
And then she would let me on the plane and I would get a slow-clap from my fellow passengers as I waltzed through security shoes ON!
I did not, in fact, have to enact said conversation. Though I did miss my flight despite an altruistic attempt to be on time, it turns out my hopes and dreams weigh 49 and 51lbs, respectively, so I was good. I have, however, had nightmares about having to give away even more of my stuff.
I arrived in LA and had a chat with my new roommate and his girlfriend, an aspiring comic in her own right, and they planted the seed in my lil brain to change my facebook profile into a page... like, what you have for a band or "community event," and all my friends would turn into likes, but all my photos would be deleted, but I could back them up, and tra la la, more professional, la la.
(Why are there fireworks outside my building right now? Who sets off fireworks in November? Ugh... what have I gotten myself into. On the upside, I have yet to hear a single ambulance or ice cream truck. Fellow Brooklynites, you can appreciate my glory. )
Before you make this change, they warn you that it is irreversable. That once you go page, you can never go profile. Are you ready? Oh, I was. I'm in LA, baby. This is big time. I'm going in for Comedy Central and sat in a waiting room for FOX where there was a wall of Emmy's. A double glass case wall.
So I did it. And immediately realized that being a page means you are no longer a person. You can't comment on other people's pages. You don't have pictures and places to list your favorite quotes and movies. No opportunity to show how quippy and ironic you can be with your response to "political views."
(Ooops. There it is. My first LA police siren. You can take the hick out of hicksville... only opposite, because I'm in a city.)
All of a sudden, I missed being a person. I was part of the first non-Harvard wave of facebook users. I've had one since the very beginning, since myspace and friendster, since Ruby Prom and The Soccer Ball, Graduation, my first summer in New York. I've had that page since some of my trans friends still identified with their cisgenders (non liberal-arts college gradates, google it) and it's gone.
A couple of my friends have texted me and asked where I went. They can't find me. And you really can't. I can barely find myself, and what's more, I can't fix it. Facebook has no interest in helping me renig on my greedy decision to become an entertainer instead of a person. I don't even know how to create a profile and start from scratch. I'm screwed. I'm erased.
There is a little void I feel about every five minutes when I would normally be checking my facebook. I'm more than a little bit nervous to try to rebuild, and more frustrated than those police guys trying to find the firework guys with the un-helpfulness of facebook's help center.
Without facebook, who is going to read my blog? How are fellow performers, friends from elementary school, that bartender who hit on me even though she has a girlfriend... how are they ever going to find me.
Perhaps this officially marks my erruption into stardom--the petit mort that is more extacy than death.
I've had the thought to start a new profile using my real name, but that seems silly. I honestly don't know what I want... I miss the way things were, but it doesn't bother me to be off the radar for a while. Maybe I'll come back, maybe I'll come back but different.
It's just odd. Like moving to a new city with parking lots and medicinal marajuana. Sure, sometimes I miss the MTA and having a bodega on every corner, and maybe I don't have as many friends here and I have to re-build from scratch, but anything is possible, and anything can rebuild itself over time.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
My Biological Clock
When I was younger, my mom used to say to me, "Scouter, you have to choose your battles." I was a pugnacious youth, never one to let sleeping dogs lie when I thought said dogs should bark. (Bit of a watchdog metaphor if you will.) It comes from an overwhelming need for justice in the world: kickball teams should have perfect talent distribution in gym class, people who say mean things should be punished, trains should run on time, and if I know it takes me thirty minutes to get somewhere, it shouldn't ever take me more than thirty minutes to get there, traffic and train delays be damned ... It is a finely woven system of everyone getting their dues that makes absolute sense in my head and, I think, fuels the slow-burn mania and anxiety with which I struggle daily.
Part of being systematically late is the sense of injustice I feel in needing to plan ahead, to succumb to the limits of 24 hours in a day, to wasting time arriving at the airport an hour before my flight when I know perfectly well that if I'm not checking a bag, I can get from kiosk to boarding gate in well under thirty minutes, from the knowledge that if I can stay home for twenty more minutes, perhaps I can finish drafting that eblast that is supposed to go out tomorrow, or make a new feather arrangement to clip in my hair, or shave my legs...
I think somehow I should be able to do more with time than anyone else is able. That if it takes a regular person an hour to do something, I can do it in 45 if I just cut out the dilly-dally. To be fair, it works a lot of the time. I've saved hours over the course of a lifetime by showing up late at airports and rushing to make my flight, caterwhaling to the front of security lines, sweet talking my way past the check in counter. I once showed up twenty minutes before a flight from Kansas City to Russia and made it. I talked my way onto a plane in Paris that I was supposed to have boarded in Moscow. I paid cash from an ATM with someone else's debit card minutes before my flight was supposed to leave for soccer camp. (That one wasn't all my fault.) I've also missed flights to come home for Christmas, to surprise my mom on her 60th birthday, and now to do my first big stand up set in Los Angeles.
I woke up absolutely on time this morning. I left the house within five minutes of when I told myself I should leave the house. And then I grabbed breakfast, missed two trains in time to feel the rush of the stale subway air as they passed me by, and arrived at the airport thirty minutes later than I had intended, which was twenty minutes too late to check in for my flight, but three hours and $50 before the next one departed. It is unfair. I should have been able to make the flight. Had the trains not conspired against me, had I not run into a friend in the deli and waited for her to purchase her vitamin water, had I better positioned myself on the trains to be able to run for the transfer, had the man at the check in counter typed just a little bit faster and the woman at the gate been kind enough to let me on a plane that was still sitting on the runway with my empty seat still totally empty, had I not revised my system last minute and decided that no one needs to be at the airport a full hour before a flight (unless you have children, in which case life is already complicated, annoying an unpredictable) and given myself just fifteen more minutes to make my journey, had any of these things transpired, I would be somewhere up in the air right now instead of listening to the beep, beep, beep of a cart transporting fat and old people from one end of the terminal to another.
But I didn't. I don't. I see x-factors as injustice, a system which, by ignoring, I can somehow overcome. But I can't. All the missed auditions, nights of making my friends wait, and rushed commutes elbowing tourists in midtown can't change the fact that I am not a superhero. I cannot stop time or make the trains like I think they should--which would be efficiently, by the way. Don't even get me started on the injustice of the MTA.
So now, sitting at gate 27 waiting for a Delta associate to give me a seat assignment, passing the time with an iPad and the unwanted company of the bellowing voices of a group of polo shirt clad southern businessmen, the type of gentlemen who use "good" as an adverb, eat fries at 9:30 in the morning in the airport, and drink those weirdly large sodas that are small on bottom so they fit in armrests and huge on top so you can speed up the onset of your type two diabetes while you are laid over. They're not in any rush. They're also wearing pastels, which is questionable at best. They're just staring out the window and talkin bout things like regular people. Their last joke ended with the punchline, "se habla anything." Maybe there's a mantra somewhere in that.