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.