Static: Bear Fat, Lye, and Giant Diaper Pins

An ode to the comic potential of static electricity.

Bear Fat Formula Pantene. Last week at Second City my writing classmates and I were sitting around discussing show issues. I was absent-mindedly stroking my hair with my hands, and all the sudden everyone started pointing and laughing at me. Obviously I had charged myself up powerfully with static electricity, because select strands of my hair were standing on end.

"Maybe I shouldn't wash my hair every day when it's this dry out," I said, embarrassed, trying to tuck my hair into my hood.

"Do you use a moisturizing shampoo and conditioner?" My classmate S. said sympathetically.

"No, I use bear fat and lye, like everyone else, duh," I said, and tried to slick my hair down with a little of nature's smoothing serum (also known as saliva).

"That's not going to do it," someone said, "You need to discharge the static electricity you've built up."

My face was turning red.

"What, like this?" I reached over to the metal railing and let out a high-pitched scream as a sharper-than-expected shock shimmied up my arm. "Oww!!"

Corduroy Depends. The other night, Sloan and I headed to Berlin to get our dance on. I went out in a very long corduroy skirt that is slit on either side up above the knee. (It's one of my favorites - sort of a Madonna/whore skirt. When I'm standing still, it looks long and modest. When I walk or sit just so, it's "legs, legs, legs.")

The air outside was so dry that with every step, the front and back panels of the skirt creeped up and lodged underneath my long heavy coat, and when I wiggled out of my coat, it looked like I was wearing a giant corduroy diaper. Hot.