This afternoon I made my debut with
The Paper Machete at Ricochet's.
I had pitched an idea to Christopher, who organizes the weekly live magazine.
A character piece about the recent heatwave.
The People's Weatherman.
He's kind of a jerk.
I wrote it this morning and read it aloud a few times.
Lauren helped me clean it up, and get it down to six minutes.
I had to cut a segment where I rap along to "Daryl & Joe" by Run DMC.
Overall, I felt pretty good about it.
Lauren went to work and I went to Ricochet's, where my friends Christie and Beth had turned up to see the program. My friend Dennis was also reading, and various peripheral acquaintances from all corners of the improv community had gathered.
Christopher told me I would be kicking off the festivities.
During the mandatory nervousness, I drank Spaten from a plastic cup.
Without much fanfare the show began.
Suddenly I was at the mic holding a couple of pieces of trembling paper.
Let's go over the piece and how it went:
Hey, how's it goin'? Everyone got enough fluids? Good.
I intentionally read this flat and dry, like a dykie gym teacher. People responded kindly in the way that people respond to a needy, crappy local band. With regards to having enough fluids, a few people alluded jokingly to their beers. One person laughed when I spit out a hard "good". Off to a weird start.
My name is Tony, and I'm a weatherman.
No, I'm not one of those Hollywood hot shots you see on your fancy plasma screen TVs.
I don't use any flashy gadgets like Mark Knopfler radar, or any moon cameras floating around, space years away from here.
So my actual name is Tony, but my character was also named
Tony. I think people were confused as to who I was supposed to be. I know I was.
The Mark Knopfler radar joke I've had in my head since 1998. Twelve years later it made a lone Dire Straits fan half-laugh.
While making vague, unspecified eye contact with the audience I lost my place on the page. I skipped over an unoriginal meteorology bit and hurried immediately to the next paragraph.
I am The People’s Weatherman. I drive around in my minivan, with the windows rolled down, studying the people and how they are affected by the weather. I ask them if they’ve got enough fluids. One time while checking up on the ghetto, I saw a hungry, impoverished ethnic boy staring at me from a shattered bungalow window.
One minute into the introduction and I've already lost the African-American demographic.
I said to his starving face, "Hey little boy. It's probably around 92 degrees, but with the humidity it feels like it's maybe 100 degrees. I bet it will cool off sometime next week."
I never asked him for money.
What I do is a service to the community.
Cue silence. Let's get to the premise then.
As The People’s Weatherman I am here to talk about the recent heatwave. Many of you here at this sophisticated current events salon might dismiss the weather as a news topic, but let’s get something straight:
Weather is what we talk about with people we don’t know or with people we know but don’t want to get to know. These people are all around us. So drink your free range microbrews and listen to the news.
Some of the weather lines got a few laughs, but these were quickly absorbed by my character making fun of beer that isn't even served at the bar.
Now because I am an authority on the weather, my opinions have become facts. With that, I have a very special weather report: Summer sucks. Thumbs down, Summer. Summer sucks so much that winter is better than summer.
I’ll tell you why:
Look at my arms. Notice my left arm is seven shades darker than my right arm. As a result my left arm is subject to stricter scrutiny from airport security. While I was researching the weather in our nation’s capitol, the Tea Party Movement demanded my left arm produce a birth certificate. And when I was studying heat in Arizona, my left arm was arrested for suspected illegal immigration. However my right arm took in a Diamondbacks game and almost caught a foul ball. Still, I’ve never been half arrested during an autumn football game or a winter skiing match.
"Look at my arms" got a laugh. But I suddenly felt like a payaso and hated myself for writing this. I plowed through the Tea Party and Arizona bits, burying the punchlines in a rushed list. From here on out, the pace picked up noticeably and my eyes rarely left the page.
Sweaty money. Yesterday I paid for a Super Big Gulp with an embarrassingly damp $1000 bill. The clerk gave me a dirty look.
“Is this bill moist and soggy from your own bodily fluids?”
I could only nod yes.
He gave me my change, but not before taking the time to dip it in a vat of bird entrails and hog urine. Now my pockets smell like a John Waters movie.
In the winter my currency smells wonderful.
You could count the laughs on Jerry Garcia's fingers.
Speaking of smells..
I paused here so I could think about how much I hated myself, and then continued.
...don’t get stuck behind a garbage truck during the summer months. It will just augment the pungent stench already incubating within your sweat-drenched undergarments. In the winter it takes me five consecutive, showerless days to stink in such a horrendous manner. In the summer, it takes twenty minutes.
Thumbs down, summer.
The guy doing sound moaned here.
I acknowledged him sideways with a "Yeah'p."
In the winter, I stay warm by snuggling with my girl until we fall asleep, spooned in each other’s arms. We awake well-rested with plenty of energy to make beautiful, ever-lasting love. Have you tried snuggling in the summer? It’s like wrestling with a roofied alligator in the world’s shittiest sauna. After changing positions every 15 seconds, you can’t fucking sleep!
Wait. When did this turn into Night at the Improv: Beginner's Showcase Open Mic circa 1985?
So you get the bright idea to make love so you can tire yourself into a nap at the very least. Here is what my current girlfriend had to say to me when I initiated summer sex.
“Your well-endowed penis is like a sour butter stick melted into a dead vagrant’s sneaker. I’m sleeping on the couch and I’m taking the fan.”
Thumbs down, summer.
The two people that were still listening laughed.
In the summer, you spend your entire paycheck on air conditioner. In the Soviet Union air conditioner spends you!
That was read like Yakov Smirnoff. It would be the biggest laugh I would get.
Earlier this week a man in an SUV had been driving on the shoulder of the road when decided to cut off The People’s Weatherman. I gave him my patented “thumbs down” but he did not notice because he was on his phone. Since we were stuck in traffic, I got out of my car and slit his throat. I let the caller on the other end listen as his gasps gargled and sputtered blood, and intense choking gave way to whistling wheezing. He died. So not everything is so bad in the summer.
Some people laughed at "slit his throat." It was a decent surprise. The gory details were not conducive to laughter though, and I think I heard some people gather their belongings. My friend Beth made a noise on the punchline, but it wasn't quite laughter.
And finally, winter is better than summer because, as The People’s Weatherman, I take the winters off. It’s cold. Fuck that shit. Drink fluids, thank you!
I screwed up the delivery on this last bit. The reveal was unclear. It was utter silence until I laughed "drink fluids" in acknowledgment of the failed piece, and everyone could politely clap, glad to be moving on.
I ordered another beer and watched the rest of the program.
My piece was the worst one.
I've been here before.
It's been a long time.
This is how I used to feel after bad improv shows.
The failure is going to haunt me for a week or so.
Afterward, I chatted with Christie and Beth.
Christie liked Dennis' piece about graffiti.
Me, too.
I told her I regretted doing a character piece.
"You should have just read something from your blog."
Yeah'p.
I should have read something from this voice.
The topic I was to write about was the heat.
However, I felt if I had simply read my own unpopular opinions about summer and heat, it would come across as whiny and not relatable.
So I took on a character.
But the character was a confused version of me.
And characters don't read copy from a paper.
They act and improvise.
Interesting.
I wanted to try something new, and ended doing something old, but worse.
I got another beer.
On to some uglier aspects of today.
During a conversation, a local soul band was mentioned.
People are under the impression that I like this band.
And they tell me so.
For the record, I do not like this band.
I think they are good musicians.
I think they capture the Stax sound well.
I think their choice of covering current rock songs in a soul style is not as mind blowing as people want me to think it is.
I think it has its place.
Just like AC Dixie, Richard Cheese, and that guy from American Idol who was apparently a genius for singing Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" with an acoustic guitar.
But my problem isn't really with the band.
It's with one of the guys in the band.
We have mutual friends.
We know each other.
We are cordial.
But he has a condescending way of talking to me.
And there's something false about him.
There's something I don't trust.
So it annoys me when people bring up this band to me.
But I must be completely honest and divulge the real reason why it annoys me the most.
Jealousy.
Simple jealousy.
That disfiguring ingredient in all of us.
I am jealous of my friends posting videos of the band on their Facetown profiles. It makes me jealous that doing something unoriginal has gotten them attention. I am jealous of the opportunities that the guitarist has used successfully to his advantage.
So there's that petty bag of shit in the middle of the floor now.
I went to the Annoyance to get keys for one of the classrooms.
While there, Tyler the manager, asked me out of the blue if I was familiar with that soul band.
I chuckled defeatedly.
My friends Colleen and Robyn asked me to score a sequence for a comedy short they filmed.
In an Annoyance classroom I laid down drum and guitar tracks onto my laptop.
For four hours, I played the three guitar chords I knew and layered dozens of possible riffs.
In the decaying, exposed wire earbuds, it sounded like lo-fi horseshit.
It seemed I couldn't do anything of quality today.
Lauren got off work early so we met for a beer and a bloody mary.
I told her about all of today's personal defeats.
She said I was allowed to have a bad day.
We dissected it and figured a few things out.
At least now we knew why I sucked.
Verdict: Loss
