taking a trip back

I didn’t update this weekend. (thanks for the concern, kymm) I wasn’t ill or anything, I was just exhausted. Entertaining people from HBO, doing shows, and seeing shows took up most of the weekend, and yesterday I just slept all day. I needed time to rest. Now I’m back in full force.

Did you miss me?

So Saturday I show up to perform to learn that I was the only person not in a costume. So, I had to wear the milk bottle costume. This is a very large styrofoam milk bottle outfit that makes it so you cannot bend over… or stand up if you get knocked over. So, yeah, I was knocked over quite a bit for the hour and a half we did the show. It was a lot of fun, but I think I pulled my neck out of sorts falling down, and I lost about seven pounds from all the sweating.

We will find out about Aspen in a month. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed, okay?

I have jam packed this afternoon with enough stuff that I will hardly remember that I don’t have rehearsal today. I have an audition with an anime voice-over company this afternoon. After that, I have to rush home and clean the hell out of my house, for the steam cleaners are coming this afternoon to make my house look presentable again. So I have to clean the shit out of everything before they get there. Then after they arrive, since my floor will be wet all evening (which is entertainment when I watch the cats try and get around on the wet carpet) I will sit at the computer and complete a work project.

Oh, and if you were wondering about my to-do list from last week… I did indeed make my bed Saturday morning. I did it once. I knew I could do it.

My office is getting moved in a couple of weeks to directly across the hall. This will take all day, there’s no doubt in my mind. I have an amazing amount of crap on my desk. All I really want right now is a new battery for my Tamagotchi. Or one of those new virtual pets that learns English the more you play with it. Toys, toys, toys. I want, I need.

Lately I have been having funny flashbacks. I’ve been remembering the first few times I told a joke or made someone laugh, and how much I liked doing that. My mind is flooding with memories of five-year old pamie telling the “What did Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant?” ( “dead ant, dead ant, dead ant-dead-ant-dead ant-dead ant, dead ant”) joke to my mother and making her snarf tea out of her nose… to junior high when I started studying comedy without realizing it. I remember how I used to stay up very late and watch the stand up comics on HBO and Showtime and Evening at the Improv and I would memorize their jokes and tell them at school. Not like I wrote them, never like I wrote them. I would always give credit to the comedian. I knew the entire “Chopping Broccoli” song by Dana Carvey. I memorized Paula Poundstone’s “People on the Left” bit. I loved to do them, and often times friends would request me doing a bit of Kevin Meaney’s “Big Pant People.” I remember that my job was to tell the jokes that kept us up in hysterics during slumber parties, and I would also be the one to make up stories that would make us fall asleep. They were always scary stories about all of us getting trapped in the school with a killer and we had to use our strength to keep us alive, making us irresistible to the objects of our affection.

When I was a little girl my sister and I used to do what I thought at the time was the funniest thing in the world. When we got out of the shower we would wrap the towels around our hips and tuck the ends between our thighs so that they looked like riding chaps and we would rock back and forth in a little mosey singing:

Oh, I am a cowboy
I’m one of the best.
I ride on my pony
way out in the west.

My spurs and my saddle are
eighteen feet long!
And when I ride on my pony
I sing me this song.

Oh, I am a cowboy…

And so on. That was the height of comedy when I was ten. I suppose it was pretty funny with my wet naked ass hanging out and all. I also found the “Johnny Deeper/ Sally P.” jokes to be not very funny, but always a crowd pleaser. I often told that stupid “little-kid-taking-a-shower-with-his-parents” joke that I didn’t find amusing, but was often a request. You know the one with the kid laying in bed at night shouting, “Grandma! Turn on your headlights! Dad’s gonna park his Cadillac in Mom’s Garage!” Oh, the world is a much simpler place when you are nine.

And I always killed.